Teamwork
by 70mb
Summary: There's no I in TEAM. (Loyalty rewrite)
1. Chapter 1

"Oh geez! Oh geez! Oh geez! WhatamIgonnado?!" The Red Scout was practically sprinting in circles around the rec room at this point. If he ran any faster he might start going up the walls and ceiling.

"Ye could try breathin', laddie, I find that tends to help." Put in the RED Demoman helpfully from his place at the card table. He was focused on his cards more than the boy however, with his tongue wedged between his teeth and his eye skittering from one card to the next.

"Yes. As your Doctor, I can definitely recommend breazhing. Air is good for you. Also, I vill varn you zhat I'm in a razher good mood today, so if you keep running around like zhat indoors and break your leg on somezhing, I might have to shtop and admire the weazher on the way to zhe infirmary." The medic glanced up from his magazine and gave the boy a look, "so you should be more careful."

The Scout stopped and blinked at him owlishly, "fine then, Doc. I guess I'll just admire the weatha the next time a BLU's about ta' off ya instead shootin' im yeah?" The Medic rolled his eyes melodramatically and disappeared back behind his magazine.

"Now now, fellas. No need to be like that," soothed the Engineer from his own seat at the card table, he was winning as usual.

"What is this problem for Baby-Scout?" Asked the Heavy, she was also seated at the card table, although she was less interested in the game –having already guessed that Engineer was going to clean them out – and more interested in her distressed teammate.

"Yeah mate, yer actin like a snake crawled up yer daks." Sniper clapped down a set of cards on the table and leaned back; Engineer frowned and looked at his hand.

Scout stared at her "up my wha?" He shook his head, "whatever. It's just this new guy thing. He's supposed to come today right?"

"Indeed. Zat is what we were told, is it not?" The RED Spy didn't actually look up from his book when he answered, but he did answer, which was something.

Scout nodded, excitedly, "so how come everybody's so calm! Whaddya think he'll be like!? Oh man, what if he don't like me?! Do you think he'll like me?! Do you think he'll be good!" he pulled a face, "oh god what if he's worse than the last shmuck!? Oh geez I hope not!" True to form Scout hadn't been able to stay still for more than a few seconds, although at least he had seemingly taken the threat of broken bones to heart and was just running in place. "Oh god what if it's a girl! I hope it's a girl! Maybe it'll even be a pretty girl! We could use a pretty girl around here!" The boy didn't realize until it was too late that he'd put his foot in his mouth.

"OI! WHAT THE BLOODY HELL DOES THAT MEAN YA LITTLE BASTARD?!"

" _HEAVY IS VERY PRETTY GIRL!"_

"YOU WILL NOT FRATERNIZE WITH YOUR FELLOW SOLDEIRS! DO YOU UNDER STAND ME MAGGOT!? THIS IS WAR NOT A DATING SHOW!"

At that very moment a piercing whistle split the air, announcing that the supply train had arrived and Scout had zipped out of the room before anyone could brutally murder him.

The train that sped through the desert at high noon was not only completely automated, but carried only supplies and a single passenger. Nestled cozily among crates of supplies like an animal in its den the passenger sat and swung their legs, gazing out the window across from them at the scenery that sped past. They swayed back and forth a little, rhythmically, as if listening to music.

Without having been told, most would have never known from looking that this person was a woman. Short, strong and heavily built, she was wrapped up from head to toe in a bright red, fire-retardant suit and hid her face safely behind a full-head gas mask decorated with paints to look like a colorful rendition of a skull. Lying across several seats next to her was her beloved flamethrower, her prized possession. She had insisted on having it shipped along with her instead of it being mailed ahead with the rest of her belongings. Pyro looked at it lovingly, Chuck, she'd named it, because she'd thought it was a friendly sounding name.

She fidgeted; bored almost to tears. The Pyro had been on this train for what seemed like an eternity. Her employers had decided to transfer her to a different base a week ago and she hadn't been in battle since. The fact that once she finally arrived at her destination and got settled in, she would get to fight again made the two or three hours left on the train all the more agonizing.

For the rest of the train ride she distracted herself by alternating between watching the desert scenery, fiddling with Chuck, and flicking a lighter while spacing out – thinking of all the battles she would have in this new base with her new team. She even sang a few camp songs - although she thought that they didn't sound very good through her mask, but if she occasionally lowered her voice she could pretend Chuck was singing duet parts with her and it sounded better – and then she thought about how the new location could be like camp. It would be fun!

Finally, FINALLY the train pulled to a stop and let out an ear-splitting whistle to alert her new team of its arrival. The doors opened with a hiss a little further down the car and the Pyro tripped over her own feet in her hurry to get out of the train car. Once outside, she found herself on a dusty wooden platform surrounded on three sides by the endless expanse of desert. On the fourth side were cliffs, several groups of structures and the terrain that separated them; undoubtedly the RED and BLU bases and the battlegrounds in-between. She looked up, the sky here was huge and impossibly blue, stretching infinitely in every direction and bearing down on her. She stood for a moment with her neck bent back she stared at the expanse, it was cloudless and seemed to twist and writhe under her gaze like a living thing. Pyro began to feel dizzy and decided to look away when the gaping chasm of sky threatened her with the capacity to swallow her up.

Feeling a bit dizzy she turned her attention back to the bases. Turned it back to more present, more grounded, important, things. Someone from the RED base would be along in a moment or two to collect her and the supplies, as had happened the last time she had been transferred. She shifted uneasily; this was all taking so long! And not only had she been forced to bear the previous week of cease-fire in order to get herself ready for the transition, now she had to wait out another five whole days of peace and non-violence here while she got settled! Oh the injustice! She'd happily give up a few meals or sleep on the floor, outside even, if it meant she could fight sooner, but the Administrator had decreed a cease-fire and a cease-fire there would be. The Administrator's word was law.

It was a few minutes of boredom and foot-scuffing later that Pyro heard a shout from behind her and turned to look. A little silhouette was running towards her, hopping around and waving its arms as it came. She tilted her head curiously and watched the little figure, clearly this team's Scout, with interest. It didn't take the runner long at all to reach the platform and once there he hopped straight up onto it, not even bothering with the stairs.

The Scout was lean and wiry like the sprinter he was. His skin was a shade of brown that reminded the Pyro of milked coffee, and he had discarded his uniform hat somewhere, revealing his short, soft-looking and very curly black hair. He looked her up and down for a moment as she examined him in return and then he fixed her with a goofy smile, revealing that he was missing a tooth on the upper-left side of his mouth.

"Hey there new guy! I bet they briefed you on everything already right? Well I'm the Scout, in case you couldn't tell." He tapped himself on the chest with his thumb, "I'm pretty tough so if anybody gives you a hard time you can tell me an' I'll sort 'em out okay?" A Brooklyn accent maybe? She wasn't sure. He spoke in a way that led her to believe in his sincerity, although his scrawny figure didn't put much behind his assurances. She nodded all the same however, and said thanks. "Right okay then, um… oh yeah! The Engie and Heavy are comin' in the truck to get the supplies and shit outta the train so they should be here in a minute. If ya like new guy, when we get back to base I could show ya around and all that, I know everybody and where everything is so it'll be a breeze for me. Whaddya say?" He looked at her with what could only be described as puppy-dog eyes and she faltered, feeling slightly assaulted by his friendliness, but liking him despite herself. When she finally gave him a hesitant thumbs up, a tremendous grin spread across his face and he replied with an exaggerated "Sweet!"

The excited Scout paced around next to her and chattered endlessly for the next several minutes, hardly even stopping to breathe. He single-handedly filled the surrounding desert with sound, an impressive feat, and although the Pyro wasn't a very chatty person she found she didn't really mind. He didn't seem to expect any kind of reply from her and she found the noise was a nice change from the silent train ride. The Pyro was used to constant noise, and the weight of this desert's silence was both suffocating and nerve-wracking. She too was used to quiet being a bad sign.

Eventually the sound of a truck engine grumbled its way to them from out in the distance and was accompanied by a pleased chirp from Scout "Finally!" The truck responsible for the sound pulled up a moment later. It was an old beat-up Ford that was leaning rather severely to one side, in fact, with the shape it was in Pyro was surprised the heap of junk ran at all. The smashed up thing looked like it had been through a demolition derby and among many other dents and anomalies a thick coating of dirt, areas of rust and a huge amount of wear and tear made it hard to tell exactly what color the paint was supposed to be, although Pyro guessed some type of brown, or red... or green maybe.

The doors swung open with a hideous screech and two red-clad figures emerged. The truck's driver was a small, but stocky man with a cowboy hat that had somehow remained white against all odds, goggles, steel-toed cowboy boots and the uniform overalls and shirt of the RED team Engineer. The person in the passenger side was undoubtedly the Heavy Weapons Guy, or rather, Heavy Weapons Girl, as it would seem. When she got out of the truck it groaned piteously and the lean righted itself. The Heavy was huge. Like a grizzly bear in a woman suit. Maybe she had previously been one of those people in the circus that bent metal bars with their hands and lifted cement blocks with loads of people on them. Whatever the case, she apparently disliked being crammed in a pickup that was far too small for her. She stretched her arms and popped her neck and back before giving the truck a disdainful look.

The Heavy had a stony face, platinum blond hair in two braids that went down her back and she wore her red shirt with rolled up sleeves. Uniform-wise the only thing that really stood out was a stupid-looking umbrella hat that Pyro suspected was to keep the sun off her mostly bare neck and shoulders. She wondered if anyone had ever given the woman trouble over it and glanced at the Scout, who was now excitedly bouncing up and down in place.

The pair walked over to the platform and were greeted halfway by the aforementioned Scout. "Jeez guys could you be slower? What, did you have to hotwire the truck to get the piece a shit movin'?" This comment gained only a slightly raised eyebrow from the Engineer and a snort from the Heavy.

"Little boy-scout is not wrong in this, truck did not start. Had to have Sniper use jumping cables," remarked the giant. Then she turned her attention to the Pyro, who shrunk slightly under her gaze and silently hoped that this woman wouldn't be as ill-tempered as the last Heavy she had worked with. That man had had one of worst temperaments she had ever seen and Pyro had felt lucky every time she survived a conversation with him. "This is new Pyro?" Heavy asked, clearly talking to the Scout despite regarding the smaller woman with a pensive stare. Pyro felt very small under that look, as if the Heavy had pinned her to the ground. She squirmed. The woman was looking down on her, more than just literally. Pyro clenched and un-clenched her fists, suddenly angry, feeling bruised.

Fire burned, it consumed, and it was a Beast that couldn't be _made_ to feel anything. Influencing its nature was impossible. She had always loved it for this reason.

What would Chuck do?

Pyro snapped her head up so she was staring her massive antagonist in the face and stepped forward, stiff-postured and bristling, until she was nearly standing on the Heavy's feet and then nodded sharply, gravely. The Heavy grinned.

"Hell yeah, Guns! I'm gonna show him around the base when we get back!" The Scout proclaimed, not noticing the brief confrontation. His obvious excitement earned him a chuckle from the Engineer.

"So long as you don't tire the poor fella out, kid," he replied in a drawl as smooth as silk. He walked up to the Pyro, tipped his hat and extended a hand for her to shake, "Pleasure to meet you mister, I'm the Engineer, but most everyone calls me Engie for short. I hear your train ride was a long one and I figure you're pretty tired, but I'd be grateful if you could help load the supplies into this here truck." Pyro nodded and gave his hand a firm shake. "Thank you kindly," replied Engie.

For a moment she thought about telling them that she was a woman, after all it clearly wouldn't be a problem, but when she looked through her pockets and the pouch on her belt for her little notebook and pencil she found them gone. _Must have packed them without thinking_. Communicating was really difficult without them due to how severely the mask muffled her voice and she decided that she would tell them later. Naturally the idea of simply taking off the mask didn't occur to her.

The Heavy was still regarding her new teammate, although with a lesser amount of obvious displeasure, and once she was apparently satisfied she nodded, "Hopefully new Pyro will not be tiny baby man like last." With this comment she moved over to the train and started to load the supply crates into the bed of the pickup. This was a strange thing to say though, and Pyro tilted her head questioningly, looking between Engineer and Scout, hoping for an explanation.

"Pssh, as if. I can tell you ain't a rage-quitting pansycake like the last guy, huh new guy?" the Scout gave the Pyro a friendly slap on the shoulder and ran off the help the Heavy, who delicately gave the smaller man the lightest box she could find.

Exasperated, the Pyro fixed her confused look on Engie, who gave a smile in return, "Our last Pyro - the feller you're replacing - had a nervous breakdown and was retired. Don't worry about it too much though, just take it easy and get used to everything here, alright?" He smiled at her encouragingly and said, "Now, come on it'll be sunset in an hour or so and the faster we get this junk loaded up, the faster we can get back to base and have some grub."

The easy-going Texan trotted mildly over to the train with Pyro on his heels and with everyone working on it, the red-clad mercenaries got the truck loaded up in just a little over fifteen minutes.

The pickup had only two seats, so the Pyro opted to ride in the bed of the truck with Chuck and the crates rather than sit on Heavy's lap, a decision that pleased them both. The Scout meanwhile, ran ahead with a wave and the exclamation, "I can get back twice as fast as that piece a shit! I'll save ya some chow newbie!" Pyro waved at him as he left and wondered if it really would be like camp or if anyone would survive. Did Respawn really count as surviving since you had to die first? If not, did that make them zombies? If they were zombies then how come she didn't want to eat brains? Were there vegetarian zombies and if so did they eat dead plants or live plants? Pyro was distracted from her deep philosophical musings by Heavy pointing out that she was falling out of the truck and that she should try not to fall out of the truck so much.

The base was about a ten minute drive from the train station, which, if one included the time required to get the damn truck started, took about twenty minutes altogether. Pyro - aside from the falling out of the truck incident - spent her time sitting in the bed with Chuck across her lap, watching as the dust bloomed out behind them and hung in the air like smoke. She found herself mesmerized by it. That vast sky and endless sea of dust surrounding her made her think of just how small she was; even the Heavy seemed small in comparison. If she let her mind wander, she could imagine that the dust was just like real smoke, thick and black, and she saw the huge blue sky lit up with orange. The imagery of the burning desert eased her almost ever-present tension, if only a little. A release she was glad for. Suddenly her skin itched and her hands pulled the lighter from her belt-pouch of their own accord, flicking it on, off, on, off…

They had piled the crates mostly towards the driver's side to try and balance out the Heavy and give the truck a little break. The Pyro herself sat almost in the center of the bed and once she managed to put away the lighter before it ran out of fluid she turned to running her hands idly over the flamethrower as she was jostled around by the truck's poor suspension. She had built Chuck herself, although RED had provided blue-prints for her. She had built him herself and knew everything about him, every little quirk he had and how he behaved. Pyro had been transferred twice before this and it almost didn't matter if she had made friends or enemies on her previous teams, because in the end Chuck was still with her, the companion that she could trust her life to. She smiled beneath her mask as she inspected the weapon for what had to be the hundredth time that day, but was pulled from her thoughts by the looming silhouette of RED base and the Engineer's call of "Just about here Pyro, welcome to Gold Rush!"

The three mercenaries drove through a gate and the truck came to a sputtering, wheezing halt next to a camper van that seemed to be in ten times better condition. Pyro hopped down out of the truck bed with Chuck and looked around at the buildings that surrounded her. They were mostly wood, as all RED base structures seemed to be, and that ever-present dust clung to every surface except Engineer's hat. The Heavy and Engineer piled out and over to her. "I figure you'd rather have a look around with Scout than help us lug in these crates, so how 'bout we go on inside and see if we can find the kid, hmm?" asked the Engineer as he motioned her to follow, she did, but a glance back showed her that the Heavy had already started unloading the crates into a pile on the ground.

She followed the Engineer in silence as he led her into a large building, through a few corridors, and up a flight of stairs. He ducked through a few doorways on the way down the hall, looking for Scout, and stopped as they passed a door left slightly ajar. A deep frown set itself across his lips and he peeked around in the dark room before shutting the door. It clicked as he shut it and he jiggled the handle before turning back to the hallway and his charge. Pyro tilted her head at him and he rubbed his hand up under his magic hat with a light sigh. "Don't worry about it buddy, that door's just supposed to stay locked is all. No big thing."

He glanced around the hall before heading off in the direction they had been going before he stopped. "The jack-rabbit'll probably be in the rec room or the canteen," he muttered, more to himself than to the woman who shadowed him in silence. The pair trotted up another flight of stairs and down a hallway, before stopping in front of a battered wooden door, behind which the sound of loud voices could be heard. The Engineer turned and flashed Pyro a smile, "this here's the rec room; most of us like to stay in here or in the canteen when we ain't in a fight." He explained. Pyro nodded and Engie turned back towards the door and opened it without further ado.

Inside the room was a television, several old-looking pieces of furniture including a couch, a couple arm chairs and a card table. There was also a billiards table, a few sparsely filled bookshelves, a record player, and several men and a woman lounging, watching two of their comrades rolling around on the floor, yelling and trying to brain each other with anything they could get their hands on. Perched on the arm of the couch and cheering for one of the men to, "bust his teeth in!" was the Scout.

Heads turned when the two newcomers entered the room and while one man wearing a red suit and an equally red ski mask went back to leaning against the wall and watching the fight with an amused expression, the other; a tall, lean woman with aviators, a ponytail and a slouch hat and slouched posture, looked the team's newest member over with relaxed interest. Pyro waved at her awkwardly and the woman touched the brim of her hat in greeting and turned back to the spectacle.

Next to Pyro, Engie sighed and headed over to the pair of wrestling mercenaries. Pyro herself, paused a moment and then headed over to the couch upon which the cheering Scout was perched. She leaned both Chuck and then herself against the couch's back and propped her chin up on her hand, watching the fight and Engie's futile attempts to attract the two brawlers' attention. Pyro bet that they'd stop fighting if she gave them both a puff from Chuck, but after some consideration, she decided that, while a good way to introduce yourself to an enemy, it probably wouldn't go over so well with allies.

After a moment the Scout noticed the masked woman and fixed her with his 500 watt smile, "Hey! Ya made it here with ya head still attached, congrats!" His friendly smile turned impish, "five bucks says Demo knocks Solly out cold!"

In all likelihood, Demo was short for Demoman , but she didn't really want to hazard a guess about Solly. Soldier maybe? "Solly?" asked Pyro, tilting her head quizzically, although through her gas-mask the question came out sounding more like 'shrrry?'.

Scout paused a moment before realizing what she meant. "Oh yea, Solly's short for Soldier, he's the guy with the helmet. So you on or what?" he asked, hand outstretched. Pyro thought this over and decided that a man in a helmet was probably less likely to get knocked out than a man not wearing a helmet. She nodded and shook Scout's hand, widening his grin and causing him to cheer the Demoman on even louder.

The fight lasted about another minute, in which time the one-eyed, kilted black Scotsman, sporting cornrows and a headband, presumably the Demoman, landed a nasty elbow to the other man's jaw and received a broken nose in return. Finally fed up, Engie pulled his wrench out of his belt and called out over the racket, "the next fella to take a swing is getting a whack! Y'all hear me?!" This stopped both men dead. Now that they were holding still, Pyro saw that the Demoman seemed a little better off than the Soldier: sporting only a severely bloody nose and a cut under his remaining eye. His helmeted opponent looked as though he was quickly developing a brilliant shiner and had his own bloody nose accompanied by a split lip and a few other bruises.

The Demoman jumped to his feet and snarled at the Engineer. "THIS bloody idiot," he jabbed a finger at Soldier accusingly, "threw out me last bottle of scrumpy!" "He didn't even drink it; he just poured it out on the ground!" The Demoman's accusation, which Pyro could only think to describe as a drunken wail, was directed toward the entire room it seemed, and he advanced on both the Engineer and Soldier through his blood and rage until the Engineer held up his hand to silence him.

Engie turned to look at Soldier, "and what do you have to say for yourself Sol? I'm guessing there was a reason."

When Soldier spoke to defend himself the Demoman grinned triumphantly while Pyro, Scout, Engie and the other two spectators winced in unison. Soldier's jaw clicked alarmingly when he moved and he grimaced in pain, but wasn't actually deterred. "IT'S DERELICTION OF DUTY TO DRINK WHILE ON THE BATTLEFIELD!" Pyro was extremely impressed that the man could be so very loud despite his jaw being so obviously busted.

"I'm not on duty and neither are you! It's a cease-fire ye damned nutjob!" Demoman snarled in response.

The Engineer sighed and regarded the Soldier like a mother who had just come home to walls covered in crayon and knew she was the one who would have to clean it all up, "you know he has a point Sol." Soldier started to protest, but was cut off by an absolutely withering, bloodcurdling, paint stripping, flesh-melting look from Engineer, "I don't want to hear you talk anymore with your jaw clackin' around like that," he turned to the Scout, "go find the Medic and tell him what's goin' on." Scout's own protest was also cut off, but this time by the Engineer snapping, "GET!" Scout got.

An uneasy silence fell over the group, without even the interruption of an awkward cough to lift the weight, that is, until Scout's return several minutes later. They could hear his approach from miles away.

"–and so he all yelled at me 'GET!' in that pissed off voice he gets sometimes so then I came to get you Doc, like he said cause they was all busted up an' bleedin' an' shit and Engie's all in a major twist an' the new guy's here and –"

"Yes, Scout. Sank you very much for finllink me in. Please calm down now. You are going to give us bozh aneurysms und if I get mine first zhen ve vill be out of luck ja?"

The over-excited kid came jogging into the room followed by a tall, blond man with a hawkish countenance and an extremely annoyed expression.

"Oh, uh… sure thing, Doc. Sorry."

"Gut. Sank you, Scout."

The pair were also followed by the Heavy, who had apparently finished unloading the crates, meaning that this single room now contained the entirety of the RED team.

The Medic shook his head when he strode in and saw the bloodied mercenaries sitting on the floor and pointedly _not_ looking at each other. "Unbelievable," he sighed. "Is it really so hard to go for a few days wizhout trying to murder somevon?" The thickness of the man's accent was surprising and if his English were more broken Pyro might say it was even worse than the Heavy's.

Demoman grinned triumphantly once more when he was the first to receive the Medi Gun's healing rays, causing the Soldier to bellow in protest, "WHY DOES HE GET HEALED FIRST?! HE'S NOT EVEN AMERICAN!"

Medic arched his eyebrows, "neizher am I." he replied coolly, "Besides, he's bleedink all over zhe carpet." Off to the side, Engineer sighed and pushed up his goggles in order to rub tiredly at his eyes. Pyro could already tell who the parents were.

"Well I figure since we've got all y'all in the same room we may as well just introduce the Pyro here." Engineer looked at her as if asking whether she minded and continued speaking. The whole room suddenly was looking at her as if they'd forgotten she was there entirely and she shrunk back a little, wishing she could steal the Spy's silly watch and turn invisible. Engie seemed to take her lack of response as a go ahead and proceeded to introduce each person by class title, even the ones she had already met, and they, in turn made some sort of greeting.

The last person introduced to her was the Medic, who was now healing the Soldier. "Pleased to meet you, Herr Pyro and before I forget I vill need to schedule an exam for you." Pyro held little fondness for doctors and tensed visibly at this, gaining a loud scoff from the German. "Calm down, idiot. It's just to make sure everyzhing checks out. You von't even have to have surgery."

This was followed by a shrill chorus of "why not?!" from several people in the room, as if they were a group of children being denied some fundamental justice. Scout even piped up further by saying, "the hell Doc? Why don't he have to get the uber-heart-thingy surgery like everybody else?!" The Medic rolled his eyes.

"Firstly, it is pronounced über, Scout, not uber," now Scout rolled his own eyes and made the blah-blah-blah gesture where he mimed a person talking with his hand. If the Medic noticed he didn't let on, "und secondly, did any of you even read zhe briefink? The Pyro has already had zhe Über Surgery."

"Come to think of it, the file did say he was a transfer from another base didn't it?" Engineer chuckled sheepishly, "kinda slipped my mind a bit."

The Spy pulled a cigarette out of his case/disguise kit and finally spoke up after remaining silent so far, "good. Zen 'e should be slightly less incompetent than we expected. 'ow reassuring." He then stuck the cigarette between his lips and started digging in his pockets for his lighter.

"Aw now Spooky, no need tah be rude, for all you know he coulda been working fer RED long before you got started," put in the Sniper with a kind, but slightly impish smile playing across her lips.

Demo chuckled, picking up Sniper's implied statement, "aye, but I'd say just about anyone would'a been workin for RED longer than Casper the unfriendly ghost. What's it been now, four months laddie?" The visible parts of Spy's face turned a shade of red that almost matched his mask and he scowled as he focused on finding his lighter. Pyro smiled, so he was an _actual_ newbie. Baby spies were adorable. She giggled and made a mental note to watch out for him since he'd probably spend a lot of time getting lit up until he got really good.

The Demo and Sniper's line of thought seemed to pique the curiosity of the Scout, "say newbie, how long you been working for RED anyhow?" He tilted his head in a way that made Pyro think of a parrot.

Honestly, she really didn't feel like answering this last question, she didn't have her notebook and didn't like having everyone looking at her so expectantly to boot. So she tried to think of a way to change the subject. Oddly enough the group was distracted again by the newbie "stealth expert."

He seemed unable to find his lighter and he let out an annoyed curse that caught his teammates' attention. "Spy's fancy suit is full of many ants?" inquired the Heavy with raised eyebrows. The Spy shot her a dirty look and made a visible effort to try and relax, letting out a deep, even breath and holding his next inhale for a few seconds.

"I was sure I 'ad my lighter less zhan an hour ago, I don't suppose anyone 'as seen it in zee meantime?" he asked in a voice that projected forced calm. Everyone in the room shook their heads almost in unison. He frowned and stuffed his hands into his pockets, brow knitted, "it was a gift, if anyone finds it please let me know. It's silver, wizh an engraving of twin guns."

The Demoman trotted over to him and slung his arm around the thinner man's shoulders, "Don't worry about it too much laddie. Ya probably just left it somewhere an' it'll turn up eventually. I do that sort o' thing all tha time!" The Spy grimaced, clearly disliking Demo's comfort-cuddles.

Beneath her mask Pyro smiled, his expression was funny and she imagined a squiggly line appearing above his head like it did in newspaper comics. She walked over to the peeved man and started digging around in her pockets. Spy (and the other REDs as well) watched her suspiciously until she found what she was looking for and pulled out one of her lighters, a zippo, – she usually carried two or three lighters of different types – flicked it on and held it up to him.

The Spy looked slightly taken aback, but thanked her awkwardly and lit his cigarette anyway. Pyro handed him the zippo and turned back to the Scout. She asked him a question, slowly in order to make her words easier to understand, "you were going to show me around weren't you?"

After the seconds it took him to decipher what she'd said, the Scout flashed his huge, gap-toothed smile, "Oh Yeah! Thanks for remindin' me!" He ran over to the door, "come-on whatcha waitin' for?!" Pyro smiled, relieved for an excuse to leave the room full of people and then remembered that he couldn't see it, so she gave him a thumbs-up instead and followed Scout out of the room with a farewell wave to the others.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes: for future reference, this: *** means a time lapse and this: #### means a change in POV.**

The Pyro had ended up spending most of her first day being dragged around the base by Scout and while she appreciated the tour, by the time she finished that, had her medical exam, got herself entered into the base's Respawn system and finally got back to her new room she was thoroughly worn out. After shedding all her various garments, carefully removing all the brightly-colored clips and pins from her short black hair, arranging them by color on her dresser top, and searching around in the boxes of her belongings (mostly stockpiles of weapons and a medley of hats) for her pajamas, she flopped unceremoniously onto her freshly made up bed with a sleepy sigh.

She lay in the dark for a long time, exhausted but unable to sleep, jittery. It was all quiet again and she kept half-hearing things; a creak of the wooden building that sounded like a footstep, a clatter of something falling in the nighttime wind to make her jump in terror. The night refused to grant her sleep and while Pyro would never admit it, she might have been a teeny-weeny bit afraid of the dark, and maybe the quiet too.

Finally giving up after an hour or two, Pyro sat up angrily and glared down at her hands. She couldn't actually see them in the dark, but she could feel the tremor that ran through them. Pyro knew that there would be color too, if she had turned on a light she would see it there, like acid fingers of vibrant smoke, skittering around her vision in an enticing bid for her attention. She loved it, those colors were gorgeous and all consuming, but they were dangerous too: distracting, confusing, delusional and paralyzing. A trap wrapped up in beautiful paper. It had been too long since she had been on the battlefield. The Pyro knew she wouldn't be able to sleep as wound up as she was; she needed to fight or to burn something. Preferably both.

With a defeated sigh Pyro flicked her bedroom light on – she wasn't fool enough to just stumble around in the black – and blinked the darkness away with a relief that she would deny if asked about. There they were, as she'd predicted. Those blasted colors; gaudy, amazing, and at odds with anything that could possibly belong in the real world…except for a flame. She did everything in her power to ignore both them and her shaking hands and looked around at her room. As logic would dictate, it was exactly the same as it had been when she'd turned the lights off: mostly empty save for a few cardboard boxes in one corner, an extremely sturdy wooden-frame bed, a battered-looking dresser with her clips laid out on it as before, and a metal wastebasket. Pyro always kept lots of newspapers around for this reason and she grabbed a few of them from a box. After dumping them into the wastebasket she proceeded to re-dress herself and trotted tiredly out of her room and outside with the trash can and papers.

There was no way she was going to burn anything inside the base, the whole damn place was made of wood and just because she was a nut-case didn't mean she wasn't safety conscious. Besides, burning down the base on the first day after being transferred probably wouldn't be a good career move. Madly, she suspected that they built it all out of wood to tempt her; that seemed like something the Administrator would do.

The vast blue sky from earlier that day had turned ink black and was filled to the brim with stars. Pyro stared up at them in awe as she walked through the nighttime landscape. They were made of fire. Every last one. And each was so huge and so hot and so ancient that the infant flames she conjured up on earth looked pathetic in comparison. Pyro drew herself back to the ground when the spots of light started to swirl together and she forced herself to focus on important things. She was secure in the knowledge that the stars would be there regardless of any event on Earth and long after the Earth itself was gone.

She only set down the wastebasket and newspapers once she was a safe distance from the buildings and surrounded by desert, a short five minute walk. Pyro sat down in the dirt in front of the basket; legs crossed, and took out the papers, stacking them neatly beside her. Taking off one of her gloves and holding her hand up for a moment informed her that the wind had dropped, perfect.

Shakily, but aided by muscle memory, Pyro's hands went through the familiar motions of arranging the papers, selecting a piece, twisting it to form a roll and then lighting the top. If she held it upright it burned a more slowly and she had more time to watch the flames and then drop the charred remains into the metal basket before her friend, that pretty beast, began to lap hungrily at her fingers; although really this was more a practice born of a time long ago, before she had her suit.

The newspapers burned well in the dry air and the fire chased the dark away from Pyro in the vast night. It nibbled and played about the torn pieces of paper as she watched. The colors were drawn into the flame's dance too, as entranced as she was by the beast's grace, They expanded flickering through the air and left her without their distracting feverish presence as they died with each flame. As she viewed the slow incineration of the newspapers, she felt her pent up tension bleed away from her. This was only a little fire, not nearly enough, and undoubtedly the tension would be back with a vengeance tomorrow. Despite this knowledge whispering in the back of her mind, she enjoyed the little kitten-fire that frolicked before her. Soon she could release an inferno and it would hunt.

Pyro sat in the dark with the entrancing basket of flames for almost an hour before she finally ran out of fuel and had to pack everything back up. Once this was done she headed back to her room and, after changing back into her pajamas, once again flopped onto her bed and this time fell asleep almost instantly.

Despite her repeating this routine for the next several nights, her tension slowly built more and more every day that she wasn't in battle

On the second to last day of cease-fire Pyro, having slept in severely, stepped into the canteen at about 12:30 pm, yawning and in desperate need of some coffee. She nodded in response to several versions of "good morning," spoken in various accents and dialects and made a beeline to the counter. _Must Have Caffeine._ Unfortunately, according to Sniper, the coffee machine was busted. Damn. Coffee was important though and just barely won out over laziness, resulting in her having to settle with making it the old fashioned way. Although that did mean she had an excuse to turn on one of the stove's burners.

More problems arose when she discovered that there was no kettle, it was her own fault really for expecting the base to be properly stocked for anything other than battle. With a sigh Pyro grabbed a pot, filled it with water and set it on the stove to boil.

The REDs were all sitting at a few bulky - indestructible-looking - cafeteria style tables eating lunch and chatting. It was obvious that they'd all been awake for some time. The Pyro noticed upon closer inspection that the Soldier and Scout were missing. She walked over to the group, scribbled her question down on her handy-dandy notebook and showed it to them.

 **Where are Soldier and Scout?**

Heavy was the first to respond, "Little Baby-Scout make Soldier angry. Went to do laps in yard, should be done soon." She spoke matter-of-factly; apparently this was not an all-together uncommon occurrence with the pair.

Several others nodded in agreement and the Demoman shook his head ruefully. "Aye, the lad just can't keep his mouth shut."

"I vould sew it shut myself if I could find somezhink strong enough to hold," added the Medic, prompting a round of laughter from the others. Pyro laughed as well and went back over to the stove to stare at the burner until the water boiled.

Only a few minutes later the aforementioned Scout burst through the canteen door, not at all worse for wear, and zipped over to the fridge. "Jeeze, I figure that jackhole gets off on punishing people. He's definitely got some kinda fetish for it or somethin' ya know?" He asked to no-one in particular, and took the lack of response as an invitation to continue, "I swear, the guy must have some freaky crush on me too, he's always on my case!" The chatterbox affected what passed as a surprisingly good imitation of Soldier's voice, "YOU WILL NOT BE ON MY BATTLEFIELD LOOKING LIKE SUCH A HIPPIE! YOU WILL PUT ON A HELMET, STAND UP STRAIGHT AND KISS ME YOU OH SO DASHING ROGUE!" The Scout threw his arms around himself and pretended to make-out sloppily with someone invisible, his ridiculous performance earned him raucous laughter from his fellow mercenaries.

Just then the real Soldier burst into the room and gave Scout a look so intense that Pyro half expected the boy to burst into flames, part of her hoped he would, just for the fire. "KNOCK THAT STUPID NONSENSE OFF BOY OR I WILL KNOCK IT OFF FOR YOU!" The Scout crossed his arms and glared defiantly while the other mercenaries tried to stifle their giggles with varying degrees of success. The Pyro leaned her back against the counter, what she had learned over that last few days, aside from where to find things she could burn and where all the bathrooms were, was that life at this base was like a sitcom, but with more guns and yelling.

The Soldier whirled to face the rest of his team, face almost as red as his uniform. Apparently all his little training session with Scout had done was make the man righteously pissed off. In fact he seemed to have long since gone straight passed pissed into wild unstoppable rage. Nice job Scout. "WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT YOU LADIES?! IS THERE SOMETHING FUNNY GOING ON? I'D LOVE IF YOU'D ALL LET ME IN ON YOUR LITTLE JOKE!" Behind Soldier's back Scout started making kissy faces, resulting in several of the other REDs grimacing in almost painful attempts to hold in their laughter. "YOU ALL ARE SUPPOSED TO BE A TRAINED, DISCIPLINED, UNSTOPPABLE FORCE! NOT A BUNCH OF TITTERING SCHOOL-GIRLS! THIS IS WAR GOD-DAMMIT NOT A PLAYGROUND! IF YOU DON'T SHUT YOUR RESPECTIVE TRAPS IN 0.2 SECONDS YOU WILL FIND YOURSELVES RUNNING LAPS FOR THE REST OF YOUR MISERABLE LIVES!" In response to this threat the Scout wiggled his ass in a disturbingly overdone fashion, dragged his hands down his body and mouthed _Take me I'm yours!_

The Pyro's resolve cracked and she burst into a fit of laughter. This failure to control herself landed her straight in the cross-hairs. Soldier advanced on her, face nearly purple with rage. "YOU THINK THAT'S FUNNY ROOKIE? DO I LOOK FUNNY TO YOU?! WELL WE'LL SEE HOW FUNNY YOU THINK THIS IS WHEN YOUR LEGS ARE JUST BLEEDING STUMPS AND YOU'RE! STILL! RUNNING! NOT TO METION THAT YOU ARE LATE! I DON'T KNOW HOW THOSE LITTLE GIRLS OVER AT BLU DO THINGS, BUT HERE AT RED WE GET UP AT 0500 SHARP! CEASE-FIRE OR NO!" He continued to yell and Pyro found that his voice had reached a volume and pitch where his words bled together into nothing more than a buffeting wave of noise. He was scarcely feet from her now and still coming. She watched his screaming form with a kind of morbid fascination, riveted by the strange color of his face and his wild gesticulation. The color.

Pyro didn't really care about the screaming, the time she had spent on the battlefield surrounded by constant, deafening sound had desensitized her to it. But now the Soldier was mere inches from her as he jabbed her in the chest with his stubby finger. She looked down at that finger and contemplated the pros and cons of breaking it off and shoving it down the man's throat.

 _Personal space please sir!_

He didn't back up, of course he didn't. Pyro on the other hand was backed up against the counter; she could feel it press into her back painfully as she leaned away from the screaming man. Distantly, she heard someone try to interject, but they were barely noticed. Steam-rolled by Soldier. He leaned into Pyro's face, flecks of spittle spraying the lenses of her gas mask. Pyro made a mistake; she turned her head away petulantly. Soldier made a mistake; her grabbed her by the jaw and forced it back.

Something in the back of Pyro's mind clicked, softly. She reached up and wrapped her fists in Soldier's jacket, causing him to look down at her in surprise. Before he could react further, with surprising strength given her small stature, she yanked the man forward and slammed her forehead into his nose. It broke easily with a loud and bloody crunch. He reeled backward, but she had yet to let go of him and took the opportunity to stamp down on his locked back knee. She threw all of her body-weight into the movement and his leg gave immediately, bending in a way that no leg should.

He fell to the floor and she grabbed the pot off of the stove before snapping to a halt. She was standing over Soldier, holding the pot of boiling water, about to pour it all over him. Pyro could see colors, but they didn't flit as they had all week. The spectral hues clung to Soldier's clothes, his face, his hands. They spread out beneath him, unfurling like a picnic blanket and seeping across the floor towards the walls. Her vision, instead of clouded, was so sharp her eyes hurt. The mercenary could see, but what she saw was grass growing from the wood floor in riotously green crayon slashes and walls that were covered in gingerbread globules and peppermint swirls. The air tinkled like tiny bells and she could hear a faint ticking radiating from the Soldier's chest, as if he were just a thing of clockwork. Not alive. Ok to break. The Pyro was practically wheezing with the effort to keep herself from laughing in hysterical stress. A sick feeling congealed within her guts. Soldier was a teammate, jackass or no. Alive. Ally. Not an enemy. Her teammate. It was a concept that meant something. That _had_ to mean something. A look down at her hands showed that the tremor was back, although now it had reached the point where it was more of a full body tremble. The water sloshed in the pot under the tremor's effects and shakily, Pyro set it back on the stove and stepped away from her injured colleague.

Still shivering with tension and poorly contained rage and hysterics she exited the canteen at a near run.

####

Fights were a routine occurrence here at Gold Rush, where personalities were big, folks were stressed, and tempers were often hot. And a great deal started because of Soldier, who had 'high standards' while at the same time, also possessed absolutely no patience. The RED's had all grown accustomed to this and were normally quite good at breaking up these fights (although sometimes it was just too much fun to watch), after all it was easy to tell when they were about to start. Soldier would get a wild hair up his ass and go after somebody, that person would yell back, there would be a moment of posturing, some more yelling and then the fists would fly and somebody - or several somebodies - would usually step in after a minute or so.

That was not what had happened here and the break from normal routine had caught the team off guard. It was practically just a matter of etiquette that you were supposed to give some kind of warning before beating the life out of somebody.

It wasn't until the Pyro, practically frothing, had bolted from the room that the team snapped out of it.

"Scout, go get my Medi Gun from zhe infirmary." Medic's tone was urgent and Scout did as he was told without arguing. The doctor, who had slipped into damage-control mode, turned to the rest of his team as Scout ran out the canteen's doors and in the direction of said infirmary. Medic looked to the group in front of him and commanded, "Frau Heavy I vant you to go keep an eye on zhe Pyro, I don't vant anyzhink furzher to happen." The Heavy nodded.

"I think it'd be a good idea for me to go too Doc. Maybe I can calm the fella down a bit," piped up the Engineer. The Medic nodded mutely and went over to the Soldier to inspect the man's injuries. Taking that as a sign that the doctor didn't require anything else from them, the pair of REDs left the canteen to try and find the Pyro.

"Is zat really it? A couple of babysitters?" the Spy asked coolly.

"Hmm?" Medic didn't look up.

"Yeah, I hate ta say it, Doc, but Spooky's got a point." Sniper piped up, "I mean the old Pyro was a right knobhead, but at least he never flipped out."

Demo frowned from his seat at the table, "really? I think ye an' I are rememberin' it differently then, lass. The lad completely lost his marbles."

Sniper pulled a face, "yeah… right… well, so he flipped out a little, but he never lost it, ya' know…violent like," she finished lamely.

Then Scout reappeared with the Medi Gun and the doctor snatched it from the boy's hands and strapped it on the instant it was within reach.

Demo caught the boy's attention with a tilt of his head. "Wot in God's name did ye do ta get ol' Solly so wound up laddy?" inquired the Scot when Scout trotted over and sat down next to him. The boy shrugged.

"'s a skill man. It's just what I do ya know?" That comment got him plenty of rolled eyes.

The Medic didn't respond to any of his teammate's chatter until the healing beam was safely trained on the wounded Soldier and some of the tension had eased from the man's face, despite them continuing to talk about the situation around him. With a sigh he finally looked up. "Vould you all please shut up." They shut up. He gave them all a tired look. "Ja, Ja, I get it alright, we've had an exciting turn of events. Soldier vas… vell only slightly angrier zhan usual und zhe Pyro surprised us a bit. If zhis vere zhe real army Pyro vould be dragged outside and shot for such behavior"

Scout snickered, "hate ta break it to ya Krautbreath, but I think you an' me ain't thinkin' of the same army here."

"I believe I just - _less than ten seconds ago even_ \- told you to shut up Herr Scout." Medic replied icily. Scout made a zipper motion across his lips and held his hands up in surrender. "Right. Anyvay. Zhis is not zhe army. But regardless, it is probably best not to have friendly fire to zhis extent. I sink I vill speak to bozh zhe Pyro and Solder about controlling zhere tempers." His last statement seemed like it was more to himself than to the team, but then Medic glanced down at his patient's prone form and shook his head wearily. "Honestly you people are just ridiculous. Ve can't even go one veek wizhout incident. You're like a bunch of hippos…"

That earned him more than a few bewildered looks. "Hippos?"

The task to which Heavy and Engineer had been assigned started with locating their wayward teammate, which took less time than they had thought as the Pyro was only a few hallways down rummaging through a storage closet. He looked up as the pair approached him guardedly. The way he had freaked out on Soldier, going from calm and even cheery to violent in a split second was reason enough for caution. They didn't know him well enough to judge what may or may not set him off.

He watched them for a moment, gravely still, colorful but eerie mask disguising whatever he might be thinking, before turning his attention back to the contents of the closet. Engie and Heavy shared a look and Engie took a step forward, moving as slowly as possible, and asked the Pyro, "whatcha lookin' for pardner?" The Pyro looked at him again, this time staring for long enough that Engie started to feel uneasy, before pulling that little notebook out of his pocket and scribbling on it. He showed it to them, moving suddenly and jerkily enough to make the Engineer tense slightly.

 **A shovel.**

"Shovel? What you wanting this for?" asked the Heavy, in as mild a tone as she could manage with her naturally booming voice. She wasn't afraid of this little man who stood only half her height, but she also wasn't about to cause any more trouble if she could avoid it. Not with poor Medic already stressed as it was.

The Pyro regarded them for a moment, as if considering whether he wanted to elaborate or not. Finally, after a rather awkward silence, he sidled up to the pair and held out his hand. Heavy and Engineer exchanged another look and Engie hesitantly reached out to shake the hand, only to have it pulled back. Pyro made an exasperated sound and re-extended the hand, clearly wanting something, but not to shake. After staring at his hand for a moment both of the REDs noticed something at almost the same time. Pyro's hand had a seriously bad tremor. Heavy cocked her head, "hand is shaking?" she asked hesitantly, unsure if this was what Pyro was getting at. Pyro nodded and pulled his hand back, looking at it himself for a moment before going back to the closet, apparently believing this was a good enough explanation. Engineer looked at Heavy with a quizzical expression, asking silently, _You got any idea what he's on about?_ The Heavy, equally confused, shrugged her shoulders in reply.

Engineer considered the situation seriously. The Medic wanted them to keep an eye on Pyro and Pyro was clearly up to something, so the question at this point was, 'Is that something more trouble than it would be to stop Pyro from doing it?' Engineer frowned and glanced at the Heavy, Pyro was unarmed so he and the lovely lady could probably put a stop to anything their new comrade did without much trouble. There was that and the fact that Engineer had a curious mind which automatically set to try to figure out what the hell Pyro wanted with a shovel. After a short internal debate, with the reassuring presence of the Heavy, curiosity won out. He glanced at Heavy and took a step towards the Pyro, "there's an old trench shovel Sol don't use anymore in a closet downstairs. You can use it if ya like, but the catch is me an' Heavy are gonna be keepin' an eye on you alright?" The Pyro nodded and scribbled **Which closet?** And with a sigh Engineer led the way down stairs.

The Engineer guided the Pyro down to the junk closet, Heavy plodding along behind them. Once there, the Pyro dug into the closet without a word and, after several minutes, he emerged triumphant; shovel in hand. For a long moment he held perfectly still and just stared at the thing, as if something about its very shape were fascinating. It was just when the pair where seriously starting to wonder if they should do something that the Pyro snapped back to life so fast it gave them whiplash. They reeled for a second.

The pyrotechnician turned and made to wander off but was stopped when the Engie clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Wait a minute now, firebug, I wanna talk to ya." Pyro looked down at that hand silently for several seconds and both mercs noticed the way his grip on the shovel tightened ever so slightly. Engineer dropped the hand down and looped the thumb through his belt instead. "How 'bout telling us what you've got planned?" he said in his least chiding voice. The Pyro paused and after a moment took out his little book again. **Going out back.** The masked mercenary apparently didn't feel like sharing his plans. He turned on his heel to trot off towards the hallway Engineer had lead him through on his first day.

Engineer sighed and Heavy gave him a sympathetic look before trailing ponderously after their odd charge.

The sun was high and the desert air was hot and as dusty as ever. The Engineer and Heavy both had to stop for a moment when they were blasted by the sudden wall of heat that rushed through the door to the outside as Pyro opened it. While the Engineer was more used to the heat than the Heavy was, the contrast from air-conditioned inside to high-noon desert outside was an unpleasant one. Pyro in the rubber suit seemed for the most part unperturbed by the sudden change in temperature. Instead he marched around to the back of the base, Heavy and Engineer in tow, with all the single minded focus of a man on a mission.

The next stop seemed to be the pile of junk wood and scrap that stood out behind the base. If something broke it was left out there. The wood pile was almost a foot taller than the Pyro himself, and came up to just above the Heavy's chest. It contained things like several logs and miscellaneous scrap wood such as broken furniture, crates and barrels. The two REDs watched their masked companion as he inspected the wood, picking things up, looking them over and putting them back or breaking bits off, inspecting those and then tossing them aside. After several minutes of this he loaded his arms with wood – overloaded even, as he had trouble walking without dropping things – and started loping out away from the base and into the desert. He looked around once he was about 50 yards from the main building and dropped his armful of wood before trotting back to the pile and starting all over again. Engineer began to suspect he knew what the Pyro was thinking, but decided that if precaution was taken and it would distract his agitated teammate then there was no need to intervene.

It was at the end of his fifth trip that the Engineer and Heavy offered to help. The Pyro, apparently taken aback, hesitated for a moment before carefully loading up the other two with wood as well as grabbing his own armful. This assistance seemed to provide the required amount and the Pyro didn't make another trip back. Instead, he surveyed the terrain for a moment before choosing a relatively bare spot and dragging the end of the trench shovel through the dirt in a twelve or so foot circle and then repeating the process to make another ring around the first; the finished circles being about a foot apart.

The Heavy and Engineer were left to stand around and watch while the Pyro started digging inside the first circle with Sol's trench shovel. Heavy sighed and settled herself down on a nearby boulder, the only boulder in the area actually, leaving the Engineer standing. He stayed that way for a minute, watched Pyro dig, and made some small talk with Heavy before eventually getting bored. "If we're gonna be stuck out here I'm gonna need a chair, mind watching that one while I'm at the base?" Engie asked, gesturing to the busy Pyro.

Heavy shrugged, "was doing this anyway." Then the Russian Amazon seemingly had an idea and her eyes lit up, "Perhaps if - while looking for chair - you become close to kitchen then you can grab sandvich from fridge?" the way she asked was nonchalant, as if she didn't really care either way, but Engineer had known her for a while and knew politeness and an attempt to avoid imposing on others, despite her enthusiasm, when he saw it.

He smiled and nodded, "sure thing, hoss. I'll get something for all of us to drink too. It's hotter than a June bride in a feather bed out here and with the way that boy's working, he'll get heat-stroke before he's gotten deeper than an inch." With that Engie jogged back towards the base; leaving Heavy to puzzle out his idiomatic phrasing in the hot noon air. He went through the building, relieved by the air-conditioned climate, in the direction of the canteen. On the way he passed the rec room and poked his head in when the shouts reached his ears.

The team was gathered with the exception of the Sniper, and obviously the Heavy and Pyro. Those that were there were lounging on the various pieces of furniture; some watching a sports game (soccer, which was most likely the cause of the shouting and chosen undoubtedly by violent petition from Demo, Medic, and Spy), or playing cards. The Medic was the first to notice Engineer's presence, "how is zhe Pyro doing, Herr Engineer?" he asked mildly. Several of the others looked up, interested in Engie's response.

He rubbed his neck and shrugged, "alright I s'pose, he's got it in his head to dig a great big hole out back. Heavy's got an eye on him."

The Scout was playing Texas hold 'em with a newly uninjured Soldier and a halfway drunk Demoman who kept glancing at the television screen every few seconds. The boy twisted in his chair to face the Engineer, unwittingly giving his opponents a peek at his cards. "The hell's he doin' that for? He gonna make a swimmin' pool or something?"

The Spy didn't need to turn and face his comrades for them to know he had rolled his eyes, they could hear it in his voice, "zhat's an idiotic idea."

"I don't know if he's got the plumbing skills for it Buckaroo, but I'd be impressed if that's what it turns out to be." was Engineer's serene reply before turning to look over the Soldier. "How ya doin Sol?" he asked after a moment.

"HA! AS IF I WERE SISSY ENOUGH TO LET A COUPLE BROKEN BONES PUT ME DOWN. I'M AN AMERICAN!" was the assured response while the Soldier happily cleaned the Scout out. Taking that as an _"I'm fine, thanks for asking."_ Engineer nodded and resumed his journey to the canteen. It made a kind of sense that Soldier wouldn't be put off much by a broken bone or two, with the instant healing of the Medi-Gun and desensitization being what it was. Not to mention the man hadn't the good sense God gave a goose.

After another minute or so he reached his destination and pushed the door open. As Engineer did so the unmistakable scent of clove cigarettes, akin to burning potpourri, hit him. He wrinkled his nose and glanced at the ash tray on one of the tables where the cigarette in question lay, still burning slightly. Engineer sidled over to it and crushed it into the tray with a grumble of "damn spy could at least put it out" before going over to the fridge and popping it open. He grabbed Heavy's sandwich – which, as delicious looking as it was, undoubtedly only remained unmolested due to the fact that it was _Heavy's_ sandwich – along with the six (or rather four and two empty slots) pack of beer from the bottom shelf before snapping the fridge shut again. He also managed to find a canteen in one of the cupboards (he couldn't help but give a chuckle at the idea of finding a canteen in the canteen even if it wasn't all that funny), which he filled in the sink and added to his amassed pile of goods with only a little maneuvering.

He had made his way over to one of the tables and was grabbing a chair when someone came through the canteen door. Engie turned and saw it was just the Sniper. She wrinkled her nose just as he had and gave him a look, before stepping over to him and offering her hand for a shake, he took it and she smiled at him crookedly as she stepped back and leaned against the wall. "Haven't seen hide nor hair of ya since this mornin. How're Heavy an the bone-breaker doin?"

Engineer shrugged as he had before. "Fine. Pyro decided to dig a hole out back, so he's been busier than one-legged man in an ass kicking contest and Heavy's keeping an eye on him."

Sniper laughed at Engineer's southernism and then nodded contemplatively, "maybe he's hot and wants ta make a pool." She speculated, making Engineer laugh himself.

"That's what Scout thought too." Sniper grinned at this.

"Boy's pretty sharp then, I'd say. You takin that stuff ta the Pyro then? I doubt our dear friend will be happy to see her sandwich missin. There'll probably be a bit of skull crushin' when she finds out," she observed with a nod toward the food item in question.

"Probably, 'cept she's the one who asked me to get it for her." Sniper shrugged and there was a silent pause for a moment. Engineer made to pick up the chair and orient it so he could carry everything at once. He nodded to the relaxed sharpshooter and was making his way towards the door when she came and held it for him, "thank you kindly ma'am" he said with another nod, he'd have tipped his hat if he had a free hand.

"Mind if I join ya?" he turned slightly to look at her and saw her normal grin looking a little sheepish. He smiled back at her and she perked up slightly.

" A'course ya can, although I don't really see the attraction of watching somebody dig a hole."

She grinned, nodded, then grabbed a second chair from the table and followed him out with it. As an afterthought she added, "'s probably better than soccer. Oh, and don't call me ma'am; makes me feel like my mum."

"Yes ma'am," he respond earnestly, a remark that earned him a kick to the back of his leg. Damn if even her kicks were well aimed.

####

The kitchen was silent for a few moments afterward. A silence which was interrupted by a subtle hiss and a billow of smoke that appeared in the spacious corner between the refrigerator and the wall. The smoke dispersed quickly, leaving a man in a blue suit and navy balaclava in its wake. The BLU Spy let out a little chuckle, which edged more towards a girlish giggle. Lithely the Spy straightened up from where he had been leaning against the wall and strolled over to the ash tray on the table in order to retrieve his half used cigarette. He re-lit the clove and tobacco blend with a lighter engraved with twin guns before he meandered out of the room and off to snoop.


	3. Chapter 3

A fire pit.

That's what the Pyro had been digging, like Engineer had figured.

The Heavy chuckled, "This makes many sense, but I did not guess this. Is big for fire pit, Pyro must be wanting to make big fire." She clapped the Engineer on the shoulder thoughtfully when he came within range, "perhaps I was expecting to see little pit for little fire, not big pit for big fire."

"They say hind sight is always twenty/twenty. Don't mind it none."

"Yeah mate, don't feel too bad about not guessin, I've made a million campfires and didn't guess it either." The Sniper added and the Heavy leaned over to give the sharpshooter her own slap on the shoulder. The lean woman settled back into her seat and popped two cans of beer from what, with this withdrawal, had been reduced to a one-pack and tossed one to the Engineer who caught it and tipped his hat to her. She kept the second for herself, but the click and fizz of her popping the tab was drowned out by her disappointed sigh, "I was really hopin' it'd be a pool ya know…" The other two mercenaries got a chuckle out of this and the three went on chatting and joking the day away.

####

The Pyro was shaking so badly by the late afternoon that she kept nearly dropping the wood she was arranging in the center of her pit. She could hear the others lounging and laughing behind her and couldn't understand for the life of her why they were there. There should be absolutely nothing about a person digging a hole and putting wood in the center that was interesting enough to keep them out in the afternoon heat.

 _Speaking of heat,_ she thought, feeling dizzy. The Engineer had appeared some time ago and given her a canteen of water, which she had mostly drained already. It was late afternoon, so the sun was at least less direct than it had been earlier. Pyro plopped down in the dust next to her almost-completed pyre. Maybe she'd sing some fun songs while it burned; that seemed appropriate somehow.

Despite her thinking of it as a pyre, she didn't have a body to burn in it (at the moment), but she could always use her imagination... and besides, she would get to really play with fire when the team returned to battle the day after tomorrow. The Pyrotechnician couldn't tell how much of her current jitteriness was from her anxious need to burn something and how much was from sheer excitement; although as she thought on it she decided it didn't matter either way.

The overheated woman sat and stared out at the desert through the tinted lenses of her mask. Pyro knew that the sunset's glorious golds, reds and oranges looked darker to her than they would without the mask, but she was unwilling to take it off and check, even if it did mean fresh air. Besides, she knew it would just make the colors worse. As it was they had already turned most of the desert into some stupid picture-book-land. A dumb, silly, colorful picture-book-land that she completely definitely didn't want to see no matter what. And so Pyro sat in the dust, stubbornly masked and panting from the sweltering heat inside her suit, eventually spacing out completely until one of her teammates called out to her. With a slight jolt of surprise she leaned backwards so she could see them around the bonfire-to-be, which sat partially in-between her and her newly acquired allies.

It was the Sniper who had called out. The lanky woman was standing and looking at her as the other two mercenaries hoisted themselves out of their seats and stretched out. "It's about time for chow so we'll be heading inside now Captain Heatstroke." Behind her Engineer chuckled lightly, but the woman continued without showing that she had noticed, "You coming with us or you gonna finish your bonfire?" Pyro dragged herself to her feet and stubbornly picked up her remaining tinder as a response. "Right, well we saved this for ya' so I'll just leave it here for when you're done then," Sniper held up a can of either soda or beer – Pyro couldn't make out the label from this distance – and then placed it on the boulder that Heavy had been sitting on until a moment ago.

With their stretching and joint popping complete, the three mercenaries gave various adieus and other similar comments and wandered back into the building, which, in the descending twilight, spilled light from its many windows and suddenly looked very inviting indeed. Pyro stood for a moment longer, feeling slightly torn, before she turned back to her pit, clutching the tinder to her chest like it would save her from drowning.

The bonfire turned out better than she hoped. It soared, crackled and reached its flaming tendrils up into the black of the night sky, throwing out little sparks that floated even higher - like an excited child throwing confetti into the air at a party. It was brilliant. Mesmerizing. _Alive_. Red, blue, green, orange, purple and every other color shone in the flame where they spun and shimmered like a blazing, seething kaleidoscope. Where the fire reached the night burned.

She lost herself in the blaze and was actually disoriented when the scuffing of dirt and a popping sound from behind snapped her mind sharply back to reality. She whirled around, or rather, she tried to and forgot that she was sitting cross-legged on the ground and gracelessly ended up face-first in the dirt. A man started laughing heartily and, embarrassed, the Pyro jumped to her feet and rounded on the offending noise-maker. The RED Demoman grinned at her and reigned in his chuckling. He sat, sprawled really, on the lone boulder in the area and took a swig of the canned drink—undoubtedly alcoholic if the Demoman was drinking it – that Sniper had left behind and that Pyro had forgotten about completely. He made a displeased face and gave the can an annoyed look, not surprising really, as she figured beer was probably nowhere near as strong as what the man usually drank. A look back at her blaze revealed it had burned down to nothing but a charred wooden skeleton with only the crimson glow peeking through in places to reveal its nature. Seems time had really passed her by while she sat.

After a second he looked up at her, "Still out here laddy?" He asked and gave her a cheerful grin. She nodded and looked at the beer can. Somehow she felt annoyed by it, or rather by the fact that the Demoman was drinking it. It was _hers_ after all; even if she hadn't really meant to drink it herself (she didn't mix well with alcohol as she had found out after getting plastered and burning down a house at the age of 19) and he didn't even seem to like it. Why not drink his own booze? He had plenty! The Pyro stood awkwardly for a moment, torn slightly between her annoyance which, as always, was bordering on actual anger – her greatest vice – and the knowledge that the Demoman was her teammate and that she needed to get along with her team if she was going to be effective in battle.

 _Play nice, play nice, you're on thin ice already after that thing with Soldier._ The small, sensible part of her chided.

 _Fine,_ conceded the rest, if begrudgingly.

She hesitated a second longer, hoping that Demoman – whom she assumed had come out for more than the sake of drinking her beer and being aggravating – would make things a little easier for her and end the silence himself, but couldn't stop the sigh that escaped her lips when he continued to sit lazily on the rock and drink her/his beer, apparently completely fine with the drawn out quiet.

Defeated, the Pyro trotted over and sat down awkwardly on the rock as far away from him as possible. Out came her little note book, but then she hesitated again, unsure of what to say, but knowing that she should say _something_ considering that he had already greeted her.

After another second or so she decided on **: I was watching the fire.** The Demoman glanced at the message and then at her pit of dying embers before looking back at her and raising an eyebrow.

"Sounds excitin'." He noted dryly but in the tones of one who was not only quite drunk, but also very used to being even drunker.

Pyro grimaced beneath her mask and then tried to think of something else to say, she felt calmer than before setting her bonfire, but that didn't mean she liked talking to people any more than normal and it certainly didn't make her any good at it. So far this didn't seem to be going well. She floundered for a topic.

The Scot graciously came to her rescue by finishing the beer and letting loose an impressive belch. "So then laddy," he started, turning to look her over with his one eye. "How's yer week been so far?" Pyro frowned at the weird question. She shrugged at him noncommittally and he nodded, apparently satisfied with her answer. "Anything ye be wantin' to know 'bout the BLUs before ye fight?" he asked, clearly trying to be friendly.

Pyro thought about this for a moment before scribbling down **spy** and showing it to him. The Pyro would admit that she was sometimes skittish and much better at defense than offense – part of why she'd been moved from control points to payload - and so she felt spies and the other classes that specialized in the destruction of sentries or in medic-killing were her highest priority when it came to the enemy.

These were her prime concern, but the spy in particular was her job to deal with since she was the most effective class at shutting them down… and so she needed to know if they were any good.

Demo seemed to think about this for a moment before giving her a look that she didn't manage to interpret, "wot about him? yer not wanting his shoe size are ye lad? Ye might want ta' be a bit more specific."

Pyro huffed and elaborated. **You said he, so it's a man?** **Is he any good? Who does he go after most? Does he have any tells when he's disguised? Do you have any idea what load-out he likes to use?**

The Demoman laughed heartily "Excited are ye? That's the spirit!" and slapped her on the back. She sat up ramrod straight, and told herself that he was her teammate and just being friendly; he was offering her information and didn't know about her thing with people touching her, so there was no reason to get mad. None at all.

Apparently oblivious to the Fire-Starter's irritation the Demoman responded to her inquiries, "Aye, it's a he an' tha Snake's just a snake lad, we got our own an' tha only difference is theirs has got blue clothes an' a better attitude." Demo paused for a moment, thinking, and then moved to her other questions, "can't say I've seen him go after anyone in particular, in fact the lot o' us haven't really seen much o' him at all, so I can't really tell ye about his acting or his load-out. Sorry." He smiled at her sheepishly and she chewed on her lip, how useless. He didn't seem to be able to tell her a single thing. Except… that they didn't see the spy much. What the hell did that mean? It was an observation so it stood to reason that it could mean something… was there no sign of the spy being there at all or did they just literally not _see_ him? Maybe the BLU Spy was the skittish type that tried harder to stay alive than get kills? Or maybe it meant that he was good enough at stealth that he could move around and reach his ends without being detected - or rather that they couldn't find him for long enough to do anything about it, or could it just mean that he hung back so far that they never saw him face to face?

Pyro made a mental note to keep more of an eye out on the field than usual until she had him figured out and then turned her attention back to her notebook. **And the rest of the BLU team?** She asked.

To her surprise he actually rolled his eye and scoffed; the very picture of exasperation. "They're bloody sad! They couldn't push the cart to our base if everyone o' us dropped dead!" This elicited raised eyebrows, although the Demoman couldn't see them through the Pyro's gas mask.

 **You seem disappointed.**

Then it was his turn to raise his eyebrows. He paused for a minute and fidgeted with his sleeves before replying, irritably, "I joined RED to blow things to bloody little bits lad, but the BLUs manage to suck all the fun out o' it! No challenge at all! Ye know we've been here for three bloody months and they've only pushed the cart through to our first base in the whole time?! And only 'cause we was all drunker'n hell! There's only so long I can take this bloody desert in the middle o' bloody nowhere afore I lose me marbles or run out o' scrumpy!" Demo sighed and rubbed his stubbly chin before hauling himself to his feet with a grunt and giving her a grouchy look, "anyway, Smokey this chat's been nice an all, but I ain't much for subtlety so to hell with it. Fact is, I came out here 'cause Mommy Medic has been wanting ta' know if ye plan on getting along with us all like a good lad or if he'll be needin ta' give ye something to help with yer sleep until we can set ye on the BLUs. So how 'bout it?" Pyro frowned; temper clawing its way up her ribs. She didn't like being threatened, but it wasn't really unexpected either. She banished the anger with only slight difficulty and gave a nod which he returned before clapping her on the shoulder again (which she appreciated even less) and wandering off towards the base – the only earthly lights visible now in the dark.

Pyro turned once more to look solemnly at the charred grave of her bonfire for a final moment before she turned and trotted off towards the man-made lights herself.

Dark of night to bright fluorescent lights. Smoked lenses or no the light shift came as something of a shock when the Pyro trotted through the doorway from the outside. She was inside now, but conflicted: on the one hand she was tired, so bedtime maybe? But the red-clad lady was also hungry, so perhaps it might be best to see if there was any chow left to scrounge? Pyro stood just inside the door, trying to decide what to do next. Eventually - as with most animals - hunger overrode sleep and the mercenary trotted off towards the canteen.

Traveling down the hall that held the rec room brought noise to her ears. Not the quiet of the desert (sans crickets) or the happy crackle of a fire gorging itself on its fuel, but human noise; shouting and laughing and cheering. She slowed down when she reached the room's door and after a second's deliberation stepped inside.

The scene was similar to how it often was since she had arrived; Scout, Engie, Heavy and a fully healed Soldier were currently occupying the card table. Pyro couldn't help but smile slightly when she saw how the Heavy hunched over the table and how tiny the playing cards looked in her fists. She judged by all their expressions that the Engineer was currently winning their game and that they'd just finished a round in his favor. He scooped the make-shift chips (which included things like bottle caps, bullet casings and pieces of candy) over to himself with malicious laughter. There was also an empty chair that had been carelessly shoved away from the table, most likely in a fit of loss-induced rage by someone earlier that day that Pyro had to step around to get to the couch.

On said couch lounged the Demoman, Spy and Sniper respectively – watching some talk show or rather and then finally, off in the corner, the Medic was buried in both an over-stuffed armchair and a very large book. Pyro wandered over to stand at the side of the couch and looked up at the wall-mounted television screen. When a five minute period of observance produced no interesting results she turned her attention to the couch's occupants instead.

Of the three, the Sniper appeared to be the only one actually interested in the show, eyes fixed raptly upon the screen as if it might escape if she so much as blinked. The Demoman seemed to have nodded off – if his snore was anything to go by –and the expression on the Spy's face was one she recognized from personal experience: the look of such complete and utterly mind-numbing boredom that she half expected his eyes to roll up into the back of his head.

Something seemed to stick out at her however, and its niggling presence blocked her from snickering at the Spy's face.

The Demoman hadn't seemed all that tired when she talked to him only a few minutes before…

Feeling cold suddenly Pyro tapped the man on the shoulder, hoping to wake him. All she got for her efforts was an especially loud snore. She tapped him again, more urgently and the Spy turned to look at her, dully.

"Don't even bozher, zhe idiot is out cold."

Pyro fumbled for her notebook and scribbled carefully, so that it would be legible despite her hurriedness: **When did he pass out?**

The Spy shrugged noncommittally, "perhaps an hour ago?" and then, with curiosity being a common trait amongst those of his profession and clearly having nothing more interesting to distract himself with, he added "Why do you ask?" The cold feeling spread beneath the Pyro's skin like icy water

 _Have to be sure, don't freak out just yet,_ she told herself, _don't do anything until you're sure!_ Unfortunately the lady didn't have any of her weapons with which to check and so she turned once again to the red-suited spy who now looked quite interested.

 **Stick him with your knife**. The RED Spy may be fairly new, but he was a spy nonetheless and would always have a knife on him, she was certain of this. Apparently deciding this would be a good time to be infuriating, the Spy raised an eyebrow at her, but didn't do what she'd told him to.

"And why should I do zhat? I may be new _mon ami_ , but even I know the Respawn won't let us 'urt each ozher wizh our weapons. Zhe drunkard won't even stir." Her chill thawed and then boiled. The Pyro growled, like a mad dog. What the hell was wrong with this guy? Was he soft in the head?!

 **JUST DO IT!** The Spy scoffed and did as his teammate had scrawled with the expected result. His knife slid right off the Demoman's upper arm like water off a duck's back, no damage done.

Pyro's mind ticked over to her original assumption. Not here then, somewhere else in the base.

"Zhere. Satisfied?" The Spy griped.

By way of answer the Pyro howled, "SHPAH! BHRR SHPAH HN HRH BRASHE!"

After a moment taken to decipher her mangled cry the Sniper turned from her show to give Pyro a look, "Sorry tah burst yer bubble mate, but last I checked the knife not goin' in means he _ain't_ a spy," she volunteered helpfully.

"She's right of course, and I did just tell you zhat would 'appen. Did you 'it your 'ead, _Luciole_?" The Spy added unhelpfully.

Pyro made a noise halfway between a snarl and a scoff. Angrily, she wrote an explanation for them and turned the notebook so that they could see.

The pair both grimaced and in unison they said, "Oh."

As if on cue, there was a crash somewhere else in the base. With her prey's presence confirmed the Pyro did an about-face and made to sprint out of the room. Her foot caught on the leg of the stray wooden chair and she toppled over it, landing on its legs sideways and breaking two of them off.

Distantly Pyro registered the Spy's snort and his remark of, "Good work, you are definitely living up to ze expectations." She ignored him, disentangled herself from the chair, grabbed one of its legs to use as a bludgeon and bolted from the room.

A racket spilled into the hallway from the rec room behind her, "YOU HEARD THE MAN! THAT CHAIR IS A SPY! ATTAAAAACK!" followed by varied shouts and several crashes.

Pyro didn't hear this though. She was focused as she sprinted down through the halls towards the origin of the sound, snarling out loud and raging at herself internally as she went. How could she have let her guard down like this?! Just because it was a ceasefire! Why hadn't she'd been paying attention?! No wonder the shithead had been so vague when he talked about the BLUs! No wonder he hadn't like her beer, snobby bastard!

It wasn't until she had gone quite far into the base that The Pyro slowed and looked around. Nobody had come with her. She looked down at herself. She'd forgotten to get her weapons. She was alone with only a chair leg for defense.

####

After the chaos in the rec room had been settled and Medic was able to heal Soldier's broken arms, Scout's dislocated shoulder and the Spy's broken nose, Sniper and Spy filled in the others on what had just happened with the Pyro. Several of the team grimaced and a few sighed, shook their heads or both. The Scout was the first to speak up, "Think the shithead's fucking with him?"

The question earned the young man several dubious looks. "Does the bloody mongrel ever do anything else?" Sniper fumed.

Scout found he had to concede to that point. "Nah, I guess not… think Pyro'll be ok?"

The RED Spy clicked his tongue thoughtfully, "in zhe short term? Probably, 'e did just fine against _Le Soldat_ zhis morning." Having resumed his place at the card table the Soldier puffed out his chest and growled.

"HE FOUGHT WITHOUT HONOR!"

The rest of the room's occupants ignored him and Spy continued as if the American hadn't spoken. "In zhe long term? Well, considering zhat our new friend just ran off virtually foaming at zhe for zhe second time in one day over a fake conversation and a few pots banged togezher I'd say 'e won't last long."

"Pyro is not leaving yet, Baby-Spy." The Heavy warned, and then added confidently, "he vill do good in battle."

" _Vell_ , Frau Heavy, He vill do vell in battle." Medic corrected, apparently disinterested by the rest of the discussion.

The Scout snickered at the Medic's accented correction and made a correction of his own, getting sidetracked. "It ain't _vell_ Krautmouth, it's WELL."

"You should really fix your own grammar kiddo, before you go after anybody else," was Sniper's input.

"Oh com'on! You ain't even German and yer gonna go all Grammer-Nazi on us too?!"

"DAMN RIGHT YOU FOREIGN SISSIES! THIS IS AMERICA GODDAMMIT! LEARN TO SPEAK SOME DAMN AMERICAN!"

An eye-roll from the Medic, "It's not _American_ Dummkopf, it's _English_." The Soldier tipped his head back so that he could see from beneath his helmet and fixed the doctor with a glare that would peel paint. Then he opened his mouth, taking a great gulp of air in order to scream his opponent into submission and was promptly interrupted by the exasperated Spy.

"You are all idiots. Zhere, see? Argument settled. Now as I was saying before you all got distracted like a bunch of _children_ running off to chase a butterfly," he sneered and gave everyone in the room a disgusted look. "It's not zhe _fighting_ I'm worried about wizh zhis new Pyro."

Engie frowned, and unhappily added his two cents, "fraid I gotta agree with the spook on this one fellas, if the firebug's really this easy to rile up then he's gonna have a hell of a time staying on task in the field."

For a moment the room was silent and then it was the Medic who had the last word. "And if he can't focus? Vhat? Ve lose? Ve have done _vell,_ " he gave Scout a look before continuing, "before our old Pyro vas replaced and ve shall continue to do vell. Ve are not as the Spy put it 'Children chasing butterflies' after all." He went back to his book without another word, effectively ending the conversation. Everyone had been reminded that they had won so far. Who's to say they wouldn't continue?

####

The Pyro dashed through the red base towards where she had heard the noise. Her legs and lungs pumped furiously and radiance swirled chaotically around her from the sharp fluorescent lights overhead. Her whole world was suddenly sharp planes, bright colors and clear glass, everything in spectacular focus. Pyro herself was a hound with a scent; utterly fixated. Real weapon or no she'd deal with the BLU Spy, even if it meant ringing the cocky sonofabitch's neck barehanded. She listened and watched as she moved and eventually a clue emerged. Pyro heard footsteps behind her.

She ground to a halt.

The footsteps stopped a split second later. Pyro swung her head around and scanned the hall up and down. It was empty. Silent. Slowly, she started walking down the hall, ears straining to hear even the tiniest sound. A moment after she started walking the second set of footsteps started up again, a quiet but steady _tap tap tap_ almost perfectly in rhythm with her own steps. Making a decision, Pyro stopped short again and put her back toward the hallway wall. Once again the footsteps stopped.

Her stomach felt icy, she really hadn't thought this through at all. Stupid, stupid, stupid. As a spy he would probably want to get a backstab, but he would have a gun too. In order to attack her, the BLU would need to decloak, so the wall could protect Pyro from the knife and she could fight him if he was dumb enough to try and stab her in the face, but he could still just shoot her from farther away than she could charge him.

She waited anxiously, the light swirled violently, and the wooden building creaked under its own weight, but the attack didn't come. Distantly she heard the footsteps again – now some yards ahead of her instead of behind and growing fainter - and then silence The Pyro exhaled heavily, realizing belatedly that she had been holding her breath, and thought about what to do now. Why hadn't he just shot her? Was he one of those spies who forgot he had a gun? Was he messing with her? How had he walked past her without her hearing his shoes? Had he taken them off? Pyro frowned at the questions and shook them away, trying to focus. The conclusion was obvious once it came to her through her stress. She needed her weapons.

 _Right._ She thought. Now the important thing: how to get them. Her best weapons were in the weapons lockers in the resupply room by the Respawn, i.e. on the other side of the base. Not a good plan, too far away, not unarmed with this asshole running around like he owned the place. The other option was to go to her room, which was closer and where she kept her backup weapons. Of the two this was the preferable option. Pyro headed in that direction, strung thin as a piano wire. Jumping at shadows.

Her bedroom door hung open. Pyro distinctly remembered not only closing, but locking it when she had left that morning. She eased into the room cautiously, fists at the ready, and prepared to put them straight through the first blue object she saw. She saw none. Pyro shut the door and locked it immediately after she had stepped into the room; effectively preventing anyone already inside from getting out behind her and stopping anyone outside from entering to ambush her. The room was a mess. Her personal effects had been scattered throughout, as if a dust devil had passed through and left every single drawer, box and cubby wide open. Carefully, she bent down to pick up a bright red fire axe and then looked through the remains of her room. She made a beeline for a flamethrower which lay discarded on the floor, was pleased to see that it didn't appear to be damaged and went on to check over every inch of her room for the culprit. By the time she had retrieved her flamethrower and clipped a flare gun to her belt, Pyro had come to two conclusions: Firstly, that there was currently no spy in her room and secondly, that nothing obvious had been pilfered. What the hell was he after?

The same mechanism that prevented friendly fire with weapons also prevented Pyro from burning down RED base with her flamethrowers (or any of her other "weapons" that might cause a building to catch fire) and so the woman wasn't worried about collateral damage as she rushed around the base, running up stairs and dropping down them, jogging through hallways, around bends and across bridges. She puffed the flames ahead of her and in corners as she passed and occasionally spun around to puff behind as well. She also watched for anything out of order, any sign of the BLU's presence, although she knew that it would be nearly impossible to find him again unless she ran into him by sheer dumb luck or he did something to give himself away.

BLAM

Pyro spun around like a top and made for the origin of the gunshot. She recognized it as a revolver, so that meant a spy, although it could logically be either the RED or the BLU since both had revolvers at their disposal. She waited to hear return fire or some other sound that might indicate combat, but there wasn't any, so either it was a one-hit-kill or she was being baited. Pyro slowed once she got to the end of the hallway she was in and faced the entry to the shooting range. Nervously, she wondered where the hell the rest of her team was and puffed the flamethrower both in front of and behind her, just to be sure, before kicking open the double doors and surveying the room. No bodies, no struggle. Bait. Pyro backed up, suddenly having absolutely no desire whatsoever to step into the shooting range, but was halted by a voice. It was Scout's. "Whaddup pal!" Pyro peered carefully around the range from her spot in the hall until she caught sight of him. The runner sat perched, cross-legged, on top of one of the resupply lockers. He had a massive grin on his face. Pyro doubted he was the real thing.

She shot off a flare at him.

He ducked and it missed.

Now she was 99.99999% sure he wasn't the real thing. "Hey new guy, just relax a little huh? You act like I'm gonna explode into a cloud'a spiders or somethin!" He laughed at the ridiculousness of this idea and shifted slightly, so that he now sat with one leg crossed, hand propped on his knee and with the other leg hanging down the front of the resupply locker. He tilted his head. Instead of relaxing, Pyro shot him with another flare and this time it caught. The BLU Spy barely flinched and just tapped the locker with his hanging foot. The locker's stupid machinery mistook him for RED Scout and clicked to life; putting him out almost instantly. NotScout's smile grew both bigger and somehow shark like. He put his hand against his chest, reached into the flap of an invisible blue suit-jacket, and pulled out a cigarette, which he sedately stuck between his lips. "Got a light?" he asked, still mimicking the real Scout's voice. Pyro snarled and shot him in the face with another flare. This time his composure actually splintered and he burst into cackling laughter. His cigarette dropped from his lips as the locker put him out again. Pyro, frustrated and confused, with visions flickering and grasping for her attention, shot the spy with her flare gun until she was out: another six shots. His laughter only got louder the more she shot him, until its echoes bounced from every corner and filled the entire range with high, crackling, giggles.

When Pyro was out of ammo and when the locker had finished putting him out for the seventh time, BLU Spy leaned forward and rested his chin on his hand. "So what now Smokey? Huh? You gonna get your ass in here or what?" Pyro didn't move. It was clearly, obviously some kind of trick; there was no way in hell it wasn't. This was an enemy Spy and while Pyro would admit that she was occasionally dense, she liked to think she wasn't terminally stupid. What the hell did he even want?

As if he had read her mind the Spy tilted his head slightly in his hand and raised his eyebrows at her. "Come on really? The worst thing I can do is kill ya right? And even then you'll just pop back up in Respawn. Good as new. No harm done. Ya can't chit chat 'less the mask comes off or you can show me that book yeah? So come 'ere, Smokey, I'm gettin' lonely ova here all by myself!"

Pyro watched him owlishly; thinking. There were clearly gears grinding in his fat little head, she could practically hear them, but for what? He wanted her to go in the room, which is why he had baited her and was now coaxing, whether to talk or to walk her into a trap or whatever was irrelevant. To assume he was going to kill her somehow made the most sense, but the part she couldn't figure out was what he expected to get out of it. She huffed; this was shaping up to be an 'I know you know I know you know' problem. Pyro realized that she was starting to over-think. She could just leave. What could he do? They weren't in a match and there was no intel or anything for him to swipe. And he'd said it himself hadn't he, all he could really do was put her in Respawn right? She could leave. The problem was that he was in _her_ base and she _really_ wanted to kill him. Spy smiled at her patiently. He knew she would come get him. Pyro knew it too. If she could just get the asshole away from that damn locker…

The Spy started talking again, but she ignored him. Pyro didn't care about what he had to say. You couldn't ignore a bullet, but you could ignore words. Instead she changed her grip on the flare gun, stretched out her body, and flung it with all her strength at his creepy imitation of Scout's face. Spy yelped. Pyro charged. There was the BLAM of a revolver discharge, but she didn't feel anything hit her. The BLU Spy squawked when she barreled into both him and the locker, knocking them over; he had Scout's face, but not the boy's agility and he had to tumble to regain his footing. She charged him again, moving to circle strafe and clip him with her fire, just enough to light him up and keep him were she could see him. He twisted unexpectedly, dropping down and then slamming his Italian-shoed heel up into her chin. Stars burst in her eyes and Pyro shrieked in pure animal rage. Shimmering flames roared and spread across the room, but it was too late. She had missed the first blast and now he was gone. Her vision swam and she could barely keep herself upright, the last thing that Pyro heard before she passed out was a distant laugh and a voice that no longer sounded anything like the RED Scout's.

"That's Tag then. You're it."

When she woke from unconsciousness, Pyro was defeated. She giggled airily. The air tinkled and swirled. Her body had heard the Spy, and her mind had caught those words, although they didn't mean much of anything to her until long after the BLU Spy was well and truly gone from the room; where she sat staring inanely at the color-sprayed walls until her working mind came shuffling back abashedly. Zombie-like, too tired to be anything else, she dragged herself back to her bedroom and collapsed into her bed, not letting her flamethrower fall farther than arms reach from her on pure nervous instinct.

Pyro woke up in the Respawn Room after bleeding out from the gut-shot she'd been too adrenaline-crazed to feel. Seems you could ignore a bullet.

Tag. You're it.


	4. Chapter 4

"Nerd."

"Moron."

"Loser."

"Yer one to talk. Least I ain't no deluded fan o' some lame ball team that don't ever win!"

"Watch your mouth jackhole! The Red Sox got heart! An… an… an' at least I got a boyfriend! I got a life! What'chu you got?! Huh?!" The BLU Scout slammed her wooden bat against the metal gate to emphasize her fury. Some freakin' pinhead New Yorker thinks he can come and talk shit about the Sox? Like hell!

"Why the hell would I want a boyfriend, dumbass?! An' I already got a life!" the Red Scout was gritting his teeth in aggravation.

Red Spy rolled his eyes from where he leaned against the side of one of the other starting gates some five feet away, "Oh just shut up and kiss already you two." he griped. Several people on both sides had a laugh at the pair's expense.

"GotohellSpy!" They both snarled in unison and then went back arguing about Baseball and the definitions of 'having a life'.

The BLU Heavy was a hulking man with a shaved head, broad shoulders, a metal lunchbox on his hip and what appeared to be a conical Asian hat on his head and a bored expression on his face. He nodded minutely at the RED Heavy when she came into view and she returned the gesture respectfully. Both carried their own version of the minigun. The two Medics – who looked rather similar except that the BLU Medic had black hair instead of blond and wore glasses – glared at each other like they each hoped their counterpart would melt.

 **MISSION BEGINS IN 30 SECONDS**

Pyro caught sight of the BLU Spy in the back of the crowd. He was taller than she expected, and thinner; thinner even than the RED Spy. He smiled at her, the same shark smile as before only it somehow seemed to look perfectly at home on his face. She snarled audibly and didn't notice the RED Demoman take a step away from her. The Spy, wisely, wasn't close to the gate and instead of giving her some sort of satisfaction just waved mockingly and disappeared back into the tunnels behind BLU lines. Annoyed, Pyro paced back and forth for a moment like a caged tiger while the BLUs watched her interestedly – they had of course also been informed of the new arrival to the battle. Deciding she needed something to calm her down a little she stepped up to the gate.

The BLU Sniper was closest to where she approached. He was taller than her and he tipped his hat in mock politeness when she came over, he was a huntsman sniper and smiled at her, "didn't take him long to get under your skin did it freak-show?" Pyro looked up at the gate. Something about it prevented them from hurting each other before it opened, but there was a crack somewhere so… if she could get Chuck just… right… there! She pulled the trigger and smiled enormously when several of the BLUs lit up and started running around. The BLU Pyro, whose suit had been made to look like firefighter's turnouts, didn't put any of them out when they ran past him; either not interested or not paying attention. The REDs all burst into laughter - several of them jeering or shouting taunts - and she walked away from the gate feeling slightly better.

 **MISSION BEGINS IN 10 SECONDS**

At the sound of the Administrator's announcement most of the REDs who had been pestering their opponents backed away from the gate and spread out, taking up positions amongst the cliffs or wooden buildings farther away. A few of the BLUs backed up as well, knowing that the first out usually got splattered. Both sides most likely had an über up as well, due to the ample preparation time.

 **5**

 **4**

 **3**

 **2**

 **1**

The BLU Scout sprung out of the open gate like an infuriated jackrabbit and went straight for her counterpart. Most of the REDs were focused on dealing with the BLU team's übered Heavy and ignored the scouts while they skipped around and dueled.

The RED Scout side strafed, bounced up the cliffs, shot his attacker in the side and then started backpedaling and shooting after the BLU got a nasty meatshot on him. The BLU Scout hit the RED with the ball from her Sandman, stunning him, but not stopping him from running and then made the mistake of getting over-bold and following her injured prey right into a hidden sentry nest.

BE-BEEP

"Oh sh–"

The RED Pyro's first death at Gold rush happened when she tried to juggle the übered BLU Heavy and Medic away from her team and the cart. She charged them, lighting a few people on the way, strafed to avoid the Heavy's fire, and air-blasted the Medic back through the gate where he slammed into a wall. He pulled himself up with a curse in German and grabbed his Demoman instead. Pyro swore under her breath, but was distracted when the enraged Heavy rounded on her and opened fire. The Pyro yelped in pain as she was hit, but her heels dug into the neon green grass and she scrambled out of the way. She managed to catch the giant in a tongue of flame and light him up like a Christmas tree, but it wasn't enough to break him of course. He laughed and she made to circle and hit him with her axe, but found herself in the Respawn Room. Pyro blinked in confusion and checked the board. Next to her name it had the BLU Soldier's and a little picture of a rocket. Pyro slapped herself in the forehead.

The next time she got killed was from getting hit in the face with a pipe bomb. Then she got shredded by a sentry that the BLU Engineer had put up by the choke point in the cliffs and which was quickly destroyed by her entire team once they realized it was there. After that she got blown up a couple more times by the Soldier or Demoman respectively, and on and on, but most of all she spent her time dealing with the BLU Spy.

The first time she saw him was when she was coming out of the tunnel and saw a flicker of blue as the silhouette collided with her Demoman. She growled and ran over. The flicker had veered off and headed toward the hut, where the Engineer's nest was. Pyro ran into the building to warn her ally and started to throw flames throughout the room, but when she heard the dreaded sound from behind her, FSHH— the Pyro only managed to turn fast enough to see the Spy shoot her in the head.

After that she laughed when she saw him get hit by a rocket and burst into a shower of gears and sprockets, only to find herself being backstabbed a moment later. When he disguised himself as the Sniper and was meandering around in the hut, the Pyro checked him near the bottom of the stairs and he lit. He ran up the stairs and she chased after him, hoping to intercept before he made it to the Engineer, only for him to use his greater elevation to hop over her and stab her from behind. If she made the stupid mistake of charging him, then he just dodged around her and got a backstab. If she put her back to the wall, then he shot her. If she was cautious he tricked her. If she was aggressive he parried her. There was no winning.

Then, near her own spawn, she was jogging back to combat and ran into a solid wall of thin air. He dodged left, she lit him up. She twisted to avoid him stabbing her. He backpedaled like mad and she switched to her flare gun. Pyro shot at him and he ducked, he switched to his gun and shot her, his aim was good, but he didn't hit her in the head so she pushed herself to keep going. She reloaded and fired another round. He also fired another round. Pyro popped back up in Respawn. With a snarl she checked the board. She had taken the Spy with her at least; the icon next to his name was a flare. So maybe she was only mostly completely useless, instead of utterly completely useless.

Finally, the bell rang and the fight was over for the day. The BLU's had failed to get past Engie's nest to the first checkpoint and Pyro's team cheered. While most ran around to beat on the BLUs, eventually they all headed back home to the base. Pyro trotted through the implausibly grassy desert and looked at candy that grew out of the ground here and there. She watched the colorful clouds and suddenly felt very confined once she was inside. The strange textures and candy colors and swirls followed her into the building and so she spent some time staring at the walls as she wandered down the hallways to the weapons room where everybody was after the day's game.

"so den I did a flip ova his head an wacked 'im with my bat like BONK! an he fell ova dead an then –"

"zat's incredible Scout."

"It is ain't it."

"No, I mean it is not credible. I don't believe you." The Scout scoffed at the idea that the Spy might actually doubt something somebody told him.

"DON'T LET THAT FRENCHY DOUBT YOU BOY! WHAT YOU DID SHOWED TRUE AMERICAN SPIRIT! I OUGHTTA GIVE YOU ONE OF MY 20 MEDALS OF HONOR FOR IT!"

"Yeah see! Solly gets it." Scout grinned triumphantly.

Demo who had just finished a shower, chuckled from where he was messing with his hair, "that's tha spirit laddie."

Spy raised an eyebrow, "I see. Soldier, what does zhe Medal of Honor look like? Pray tell."

Soldier screwed up his face in thought. "IT IS A CROSS LOOKING THING WITH A CIRCLE AND AN EAGLE FOR AMERICA!"

Across the room, the Heavy sat on a bench and was inspecting every inch of her minigun for scratches and other damage. The Medic sat next to her and was fiddling with some part of his syringe gun that appeared to have jammed badly. He had apparently been listening though, because he burst into raucous laughter at the Soldier's answer. Even the Spy chuckled. "Non, mon ami you are mistaken. You see ze American Medal of honor looks like a star. I believe you are zinking of zhe _German_ Badge of Honor." He turned to the still laughing doctor. "How do you say it?"

Medic tried painfully to stifle his giggles and only managed halfway, "Ehrenzeichen der Bundeswehr, Herr Spy." The Soldier grumbled some nonsense and then marched off toward the shower room followed by the Sniper, Spy and Engineer and Scout, who just shrugged and then plowed on with his story despite nobody listening to him.

Distantly his blather was still audible until eventually Spy interrupted him with something that sounded an awful lot like, "Shut up! Ferme ta bouche! Ta gueule! Mon dieu, garcon, on t'a bercé trop près du mur?!" The Engineer, Sniper, Soldier and Scout could be heard laughing from their respective stalls.

The Demoman jogged passed Pyro as she wandered into the room and he smiled at her.

"There ye are Pyro, was wonderi'n were ye got to! I'm goin ta' grab some booze ta celebrate our victry! Ye look right tired, so it'll do ye good laddie!" With that the Scot ran off down the hall. Pyro shook her head tiredly. She could still hear the ticking clockwork and the tinkling bells. She walked over to her cubby, but kept Chuck instead of putting him away. The BLU Spy obviously didn't care about the bell and cease-fire, so she didn't feel good about being without her weapons. Instead, she dragged out a cardboard box and rifled through it. Pyro retrieved a carton of crayons and a mostly untarnished coloring book from the box and took them over to a corner of the room where she sat cross-legged on the floor with her back to the wall and focused on neatly putting the colors onto the white pages. Nobody bothered her for a nice long while and she almost relaxed.

Almost.

"Hey what's that?" Pyro jerked slightly and a red crayon streak went outside the lines. She glared at it as if it might shuffle back to where she wanted it. Scout frowned apologetically, "Oh geeze, sorry man, didn't mean ta' startle ya." The Scout was wearing what appeared to be a clean uniform and his hair was plastered to his scalp, so Pyro guessed he'd just gotten out of the shower. She looked around and saw the rest of the team was also in the room. Several of them also matched the same pattern of wet hair and fresh clothes that indicated shower, the Medic and Heavy were busy with their equipment and she assumed they would shower when they were done. Pyro herself felt gross and sweaty in her suit, but she didn't what to shower until nighttime, the idea of taking off her mask with people in the next room made her too nervous.

The Demoman had returned with the promised booze while she'd been focused on coloring and he sauntered over. He peeked over Scout's shoulder at her picture and then skirted around so that he was standing next to her and could see the picture the right way up.

"That's a good picture laddie."

"Yeah, it's uh…real um…colorful. Yeah." added Scout, rather desperately, and gave Demo an apologetic look when the man rolled his eye. Pyro nodded distractedly and thanked them for being kind despite the fact that they were fishing around for nice things to say about it. Demo squatted down next to her and sat a beer on the ground by her left knee.

"Here ye go. Ye did good in battle today and ye deserve ta celebrate! Plus it's yer first day an all!" He smiled at her broadly. She looked back at him and for a moment she really wanted to oblige him. Pyro slumped her shoulders guiltily. Why where they being so nice to her? All she did was die and screw up. She hadn't done a single thing right. She pulled out her notebook and wrote on it. **Stop. I know you're just saying that to be nice. I was shit. Thanks for the beer, but I burnt down my house the last time I drank.** Pyro sighed and showed Demo and Scout the message. They started to object, so she pushed the notebook into Demo's hands, packed up her coloring book and crayons, grabbed Chuck and then moved to leave.

"Lad ye weren't that bad! Ye shouldn't be so hard on yerself. Besides laddy, it don't really matter do it? We won!"

"Yeah man! It was your first day! And if it's that creep Spy that's botherin ya then don't worry 'bout it, he's just trying ta wind ya up, don't le—" Pyro left the room before he could finish.

Somehow she felt colder and darker once she was in the hallway, as if she had gone from a summer place to a winter one, but she ignored the feeling and trotted off down the empty wood halls, away from the noise of her team. It grated on her nerves and made her feel guilty and useless.

She wandered around a bit and then eventually paced down to the Respawn Room with Chuck. There, she checked the board and replays for the record of the day's battle; she wanted to see what the BLU Spy had been trying to do. It hadn't made sense.

What she saw made even less sense.

He hadn't gone after anybody or anything. He didn't sap any RED buildings. He didn't attack her allies. He didn't touch the cart. The Spy only went after her.

What the hell? She asked Chuck what he thought about it. Chuck didn't know either. Maybe Scout was right, maybe the Spy really was just winding her up, but what was the point? Why her and not somebody more important like the Medic or Engineer?

Pyro ended up watching the replays until her head hurt. So many of the ways she had died had been stupid and pointless, she should have known better, especially with the Spy's tricks. Some of them had been such obvious baits and traps that the fact that she'd fallen for them made her ill. Pyro could barely even remember the actual battle by now. It was all a blur; her memories overlapping with the replays. Obviously she hadn't been thinking clearly, or rather, she had been thinking less clearly than normal. She could do better. She needed to do better.

Pyro patted Chuck lovingly and swore she would do better tomorrow. She'd do Chuck proud and maybe then she'd feel better.

####

The BLU Sniper was the first to start shouting. "Why don'tcha ever heal me? It's not loik usin' that Medi Gun is hard work or nothing'!"

The Medic sniffed irritably and said in a cold voice, "I vill start healing you vhen you become a productive member of the team Sniper, but in the meantime I think I vill stick to healing the teammates using GUNS." Sniper balled his fists and opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the Soldier, a large Samoan man in a collared uniform and flight helmet. "Speaking of being a productive member of the team," he turned his gaze toward Heavy, "where were you the whole time Lardo?"

The Heavy raised his eyebrows dangerously and the Soldier remembered belatedly that the Heavy was much bigger than him, "Heavy vas busy vith little cart and protecting Medic, ve should not have lost. RED team barely fights."

"Not fighting huh? Say that to my ass, Lardfat, and all the bullet holes in it!"

Heavy shrugged. "I do not see you many times."

Soldier jumped back in on this comment, "that's right Pigtails, I didn't see you either! So where were you huh?! Off with your little RED boyfriend?!"

"Pigtails? Boyfriend?!" The Scout sputtered and turned a shade of magenta. "Sorry I wasn't there ta fight all yer battles for ya, Buckethead," She snarled and crossed her arms defiantly, "but I was busy being ON FIRE THE WHOLE FRIGGIN TIME!" The Scout rounded on the BLU Pyro and roared, her lips pulled back and revealed her teeth like an angry dog. "So tell me Mumbles, where the hell were you?! Huh?"

The Pyro initially hadn't been paying much attention to the argument, but since nobody wanted to take the blame, he was bound to get dragged into it, and as soon as he did he growled and yanked off his mask, unintentionally knocking his firefighter's helmet to the ground and revealing a mop of black hair and a dark flustered face covered in burn scars. "Maybe if I wasn't always getting killed by sentries I could be a little more helpful!"

"Well maybe you should stop walking out in front of sentries then, yes?" interjected the BLU Spy with a leer.

The Pyro spun like a whirligig to face the Spy and yowled, "Well maybe if you weren't so goddamn useless there wouldn't be so many sentries in the first place!" The Spy laughed and the other BLUs glared at him.

"What's so freakin funny, creep?" snapped the Scout.

Spy smiled, "just the irony."

"The hell does that mean?"

"Well a Pyro who uses a standard flamethrower, and therefore has plenty of ammo to air-blast, but also refuses to put out his teammates when they catch fire or fight defensively to help push the cart is calling me useless. I think it's ironic."

"I've still got more kills than you; at least I'm doing something!" sputtered the indignant pyrotechnician.

Spy shrugged a shoulder serenely and said in a conversational manner to the Engineer, "so I notice the RED Spy has been having a field day with your machines as of late…" The Engineer sighed unhappily and glanced in the Pyro's direction.

"I hate ta say it podna, but l'Espion has got himself a point dere. If you'd help me get rid of dat RED capo once in a while, den we wouldn't be missin' our teleporters and sentries every match and we might even gain some ground." She admitted, looking at her boots and fidgeting unhappily with the drink cup in her side pouch.

To this the Spy let out a derisive snort, "your expectations are too high I think, Engineer. Our friend Leeroy Jenkins here couldn't find his own rear with both hands and a dog. Although I suppose it must be hard to spy-check when you're busy cycling through Respawn. So perhaps we should cut him slack."

"Espion dat ain't no—!" The Engineer started to protest, but unfortunately for her doomed peacekeeping efforts, this was apparently all the goading it took to get the BLU Pyro's goat. He let out an enraged howl and grabbed the nearest blunt object – which happened to be the whisky bottle from out of Demoman's hands – and hurled it at his antagonist's head with all his strength. The Spy, in-turn, ducked under the attack. The bottle shattered against the wall and Spy took this as an invitation to leave the room. The victimized Demoman looked more stunned than anything else at the tragic loss of his hooch, but that wouldn't last for longer than the second or two of utter shock before the redhead realized what had happened. It had probably been good whiskey too.

"Have fun with your bullet holes Fry-face~" Spy cackled when he heard the inhuman shriek that the Pyro let out in response and closed the door behind him. Then he heard the characteristic bellow of the rampaging Irishman and decided to put a few more rooms between himself and the brawl for safety reasons.

In a far hallway, Spy released a shaky sigh as the racket of the eight remaining BLUs trying to out-scream each other drifted throughout the base like an odor. He fidgeted, straightening his tie and tugging nervously at the cuffs of his sleeves before wandering off in a random direction. He wasn't sure where he felt like going at the moment. Definitely not to bother the REDs, he decided after several minutes of walking around his base's halls and clicking his Deadringer open and closed absentmindedly. There was plenty to do in his own base; he didn't need somebody else to entertain him and technically he was violating the Administrator's rules by sneaking into RED base anyway. He could entertain himself! For instance, he could read a book… but he didn't have any that he hadn't already read. The television was in the common room which was currently occupied by his screaming teammates, along with the playing cards and radio. There was nothing interesting to do in his own room and nobody in his base would be worth the trouble of speaking to, especially now, so that was out. That left what? Target practice maybe? With a sigh Spy changed direction and meandered off in the general direction of the BLU base's shooting range.

After two hours of practice, when Spy realized he was bored out of his skull, he wandered off again. In an open space he found one of Scout's forgotten baseballs and played wallball against the side of a building for a while and then laid down on the ground, lit a cigarette, balanced the baseball on the bottom of his right foot and tried to remember the names of every weapon type he had seen since joining BLU. When he dropped the baseball by accident, he switched to balancing it on his left foot. After a few more drops and switches Spy gave up with an annoyed huff, grabbed the ball, flung it as far as he could, jumped to his feet, aimed a kick at the dusty ground, and finally caved and walked off with his hands in his pockets toward the RED base.

The REDs where throwing a victory party, which was just about as halfhearted as everything else they did. The half-heartedness made a kind of sense if one thought about it; after all they had barely done anything at all to win, and so they didn't really have much to throw a party over. This particular party seemed to consist mostly of eating dinner, eating sweets someone had made or found somewhere and drinking somebody's liquor stash, and yet somehow it all seemed even more lackadaisical than usual.

The BLU Spy had switched his Deadringer for the Cloak and Danger on the way over and was perched on the kitchen counter next to the wall in a spot where nobody was going to touch or bump into him by accident. He didn't smoke when he didn't feel like getting himself into trouble, so he resisted the urge and just kept the cigarette between his lips without lighting it.

For the most part the party was unspectacular; the REDs talked about this and that of little interest, which Spy only half-listened to. Mostly he listened to the _way_ they talked more than the words, all the while he watched their faces, their hands, how they held themselves, how they interacted; all things he could imitate.

"Doktor is good cook!" Heavy's face practically glowed with delight; she loved food and was not ashamed to show it.

The Medic brushed off the compliment, flattered but truly disinterested in skills not related to his select few interests."Danke, Frau Heavy, but cooking is simply chemistry, it is not difficult if you have a recipe."

"Aye, chem'tri's eas…eas… it's uh…easy lass. But Doctr, ye need ter use more ni…nitra glyc'rin ta get a _real_ kick!" The Demoman had apparently gotten to the point where he actually showed how drunk he was. Explosives and alcohol weren't historically a good combo, but the Administrator obviously knew something the rest of them didn't since she seemed to seek the combination out.

"Yeah ok Demo, dat's great pal, so uh since you're so smart an good at chemistry an' everything like dat, hows about you take a nap now and den when you wake up, you can show the Doc and da rest of us how to cook better. Sound good?" Scout patted the Demoman on the back in a friendly sort of way and smiled broadly.

"I dunno Scoot… I could uh…I could show ye how ter do it now, s'bloody easy."

"Not happenin' pardner." declared daddy Engineer, putting the metaphorical foot down.

Then the noob Spy felt the need to add his opinion, "Demoman, you are an idiot and that is a terrible idea."

"Is not good idea, base will being exploded." Agreed the Heavy, with far better intentions than grammar.

The Red Demoman's face twisted up like he was sorting out a complex problem before it twisted up a different way in drunken anger. "Oi! Ye bloody idiots wanna fight? Cus I'll fioght yer'all an beat ever one'a ye! Right bloody now!" The BLU Spy shifted marginally from his slouched cross-legged posture and paid slightly more attention. If there was going to be a RED team brawl he wanted to watch it.

"Shut it you cluckheads,!" Scout snapped and then turned back to the overly inebriated Demoman, "hey man, just chill out yeah? You don't need to fight anybody; it ain't even fair 'cus you'd just beat 'em to a pulp right guys?"

"Scout honestly…" sighed the Red Spy. The BLU Spy silently hoped he would do something to wind the Demoman up further just to start the fight up. It would be even more fun to watch the incompetent idiot get some air let out of his sails.

" _Right guys_?" repeated Scout, smiling widely; just this side of slasher-movie villain.

The Medic, ever responsible, was the first to concede, "Yes of course, Herr Demoman," he sighed.

Engineer, the other responsible party, chuckled mildly, "sure thing Hoss, wouldn't dream of picking a fight with a tough feller like you, eh Snipes?"

"Never dream of it, mate." shrugged the woman mildly, probably she never had. The Red Sniper, unlike her enemy counterpart, didn't seem like the type. Of course she obviously _was_ the type to blow off a person's head from a distance or she wouldn't be there at all, but that was a different matter.

Heavy, who clearly felt the need to act the part, overcompensated by raising her voice to a screechy high pitch and covered her face with her massive hands as if the Demoman were actively throwing acid on her. "Yes, small but very drunk friend. Heavy is frightened like Baby-Scout says, please do not hurt tiny baby Heavy." The BLU Spy raised his eyebrows, that woman would make a killing in theater. Demo scrutinized her suspiciously while the rest of the team was too busy gaping to react any other way.

"I WILL FIGHT YOU AND WIN LIKE AN AMERICAN YOU ENGLI—" The Soldier didn't finish his challenge because he was too busy falling face first on the floor and laying there unmoving, his head bent at an odd angle. Demoman blinked. The BLU Spy blinked. The RED team blinked. The RED Spy stood behind the Soldier's prone form nonchalantly with a lit cigarette and an innocently surprised expression.

"How strange, it appears zat our stupid friend has died from terror. Extraordinary!"

"…"

"…Spy… did you actually just?

"Non, Did I not just say? Obviously he has frightened himself to death, but sanks to Respawn he should be fine in a few minutes."

"Spooky, you realize yer somethin of a hypocrite for getting on Pyro's case if yer just gonna turn around and do stuff like that."

There was a noticeably bitter pause at the mention of the conspicuously absent Pyro before the conversation continued. Sometimes the BLU Spy wished he could simply ask for the answers to his questions, but on the other hand, if he could do that then he would just end up with even more free time that he wouldn't know what to do with.

"Yes, I am perfectly aware of zat, but sometimes zis idiot is just too loud." The RED Spy responded with only a hint of annoyance in his voice. He glanced over at the swaying Demoman who was now peering at _him_ suspiciously instead of the Heavy, "I mean eh, sometimes he is just too…frightened." The Spy adlibbed lamely, although it seemed to be enough to satisfy the drunkard who then stumbled over to the fridge and nearly took a spill on the floor. The BLU Spy very sincerely hoped that he wasn't wearing his kilt in the traditional style.

"Herr Spy I sink I vould like a vord vit you in ze ozer room please." The Medic gave the RED Spy a look and walked out of the room, when the Spy followed, his BLU counterpart just barely heard the man's retort of:  
"Of course, Maman. Je suis une muavaise fillette et je suis très très désolé." The BLU Spy almost gave himself away when he choked on a fit of giggles, but managed to suppress it at the last minute.

The Scout was still trying to deal with the Demoman. "See pal? So how 'bout dat nap yeah? I mean, you just scared big bad Sol to death. Dat was amazing! You gotta be a bit sleepy after dat!"

"Well…I"

"Great! How 'bout you just sit down in this comfy metal chair here and just put yer head down for a minute." The remaining REDs all waited silently for a few moments until the drunken Scotsman started to snore and then they relaxed with a sigh. "Ok he's out."

After the Demoman went out the rest of the conversation mellowed and the party seemed to drop away. After a while the REDs bid each other goodnight, split up and the Demoman was moved to his room by the Heavy, leaving the BLU Spy alone in the kitchen with no entertainment. He lit up once the base had been silent for about fifteen minutes, took a long drag and went over to the fridge, where he moved half the eggs and Scout's soda into the freezer, moved the ice-cream to the fridge and rearranged everything so it would be difficult to find or take out without spilling something. When he was finished he took a step back and admired his work with a pleased giggle.

The Spy turned to the rest of the kitchen trying to think of other ways to cause chaos, normally he messed with the RED team personally, but it was nice to mix things up every once in a while.

He switched which cupboards all the dishes were in and then went over to the table, thinking about hiding the chairs somewhere else in the base, when he hit something with his foot. Spy glanced down and saw a small notebook on the floor. It was near where the Demoman had been sitting if he recalled correctly (and he usually did) and for a moment he wondered if it was a journal or something of that nature.

The Spy picked up the book and sat down in the Demoman's chair to inspect it. The little notebook was plain, with a brown cover and lined pages; the handwriting inside was neat and easily legible, but most of all the BLU Spy recognized it. This was the RED Pyro's notebook. The one he used to speak. Spy felt his own equivalent of Scout's slasher smile spread across his face, " _jackpot,_ " he breathed.

Hurriedly he started flipping through the pages, scanning the text for clues about his newest pal. Most of the text made little sense without its original context, but once he got farther in, closer to the blank pages, he started to recognize pieces of it until he found the last line. BLU Spy reread it several times and tapped his knee thoughtfully. He glanced at the ceiling, thought about how his own actions were related to the likely meaning of the line and finally he made a decision, hopped to his feet flipped the little notebook closed and put it in his jacket pocket next to his disguise kit before jogging of into the halls of RED base in search of his subject.

He wanted to see what would happen if the Pyro not only knew that his notebook –his means of speaking was gone – but how he would react to seeing it in enemy hands, an experiment, to judge his new friend's character. After all, the fellow had proved to be delightfully easy to wind up, more so even than his own team's Pyro. Not only that, but the RED Pyro's reactions were also far more severe; it would be a very entertaining exercise.

When The Spy finally found the man he was looking for he was surprised. He had expected to find the Pyro in his room or perhaps in the rec room, but instead Spy found him in the firing range. He was shooting flare after flare at targets and the Pyro's laser-like focus only added to the Spy's impression that the man got extremely involved in whatever activity he was working on. Tunnel vision was one of his favorite traits to find in his enemies; it made them easy to stab.

Pyro's arm was shaking and when he fired, the flare missed. Pyro growled that animal noise of his, reloaded, fired again, missed, reloaded, fired, and missed. He made a noise that sounded close to a frustrated sob and tossed the flaregun onto the ground before dropping to the floor himself. Another affirmation of a character trait Spy had already noticed; he cared too much, which was a hilariously tragic trait for a member of the RED team to possess. The Pyro sat on the floor and breathed heavily for a moment, obviously trying to calm his frustration; he'd most likely been practicing for quite awhile if he was that worked up. Spy stood in the corner of the room and watched; suddenly not feeling inclined to interrupt a ritual so similar to one of his own.

The Pyro grabbed his flamethrower and the Spy froze on instinct, wondering if he'd done something to give himself away, and then relaxed when the Pyro flopped against the wall with it on his lap. He expected the Pyro to inspect the weapon, or perhaps clean it, but instead the Pyro started mumbling, low enough and muffled enough that the BLU couldn't make out the words and could only barely tell his tone of voice. He muttered something in a rather tired sounding manner and then to Spy's immense surprise, dropped his tone down and bobbed the flamethrower up and down so it seemed as if it were 'responding' to whatever he had said to it. The Pyro chuckled at whatever witty comment the flamethrower had made and punched it lightly, as one might punch a friend in the shoulder.

The Pyro and his weapon had a several minute long conversation, while the Spy wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or feel extremely bad and was only sure that he felt like someone had poured cold water on him and that somehow the shooting range now seemed very large, empty, far too quiet and that he very much did not want to be in there anymore. Without a moment's hesitation the Spy turned on his heel and ran out of the range, out of the building and out of the RED base, only stopping once he was outside the BLU team's own common room. He heard the television blaring and his team arguing about something or rather and he let out a breath. The Spy sat down on the floor and hugged his knees, resting his head on his arms tiredly. He listened to the noise and relaxed by inches until he dosed off by the door, still invisible.


End file.
